AMERICAN IDEALS 

EDITED BY 

NORMAN FOERSTER 

Associate Professor of English 
AND 

W. W. PIERSON, Jr. 

Assistant Professor of History in the 
Ifniversity of North Carolina 




BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 



Ens 

,Fl5 



COPYRIGHT, I917, BY NORMAN FOERSTER AND W. W. PIERSON, JR. 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



The selections in this book are used by permission 
oft and special arrangement with, their proprietors. 



SEP 25 1917 

CAMBRIDGB . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 

©aA47H7t2 
710 . ' • 



PREFACE 

"Before our war we were to Europe but a huge mob of 
adventurers and shopkeepers. Leigh Hunt expressed it well 
enough when he said that he could never think of America 
without seeing a gigantic counter stretched all along the 
seaboard.'* 

It is the Civil War that James Russell Lowell referred to 
in this passage; it is the Civil War that revealed once more, 
as the War of Independence had also revealed, the idealism 
of those remote forbears of ours who came to this continent 
"not to seek gold, but God." But after the Civil War, our 
material prosperity grew apace, until our ideals seemed 
gradually to become dimmer and, in the view of many ob- 
servers, both foreign and American, faded away altogether. 
And now, having accepted our responsibilities in world aflFairs, 
we believe that we shall reveal once again some of the ideals 
we have cherished in the past and some of the new ideals 
that the age calls for. 

It is the function of this little book to bring together cer- 
tain essays, addresses, and state papers that express, from 
the point of view of American statesmen and men of letters, 
these ideals, past and present. A final chapter of "Foreign 
Opinion of the United States" regards a few of the same 
subjects from an interestingly different angle. 

One who reads these utterances reflectively will come to 
the conclusion that they exhibit a marked nobility of will 
and mind. For that the reader was amply prepared. But 
at the same time one cannot but confess that these expres- 
sions of the ideals that have guided us in the past and are 
animating our action in the present are somewhat deficient 



IV PREFACE 

in clarity of purpose. Emerson said that "America is an- 
other word for Opportunity," and the phrase has often been 
repeated — but who inquires, "Opportunity for what?" 
There is another sentence of Emerson's that is even more 
deserving of repetition : " It is not free institutions, it is not 
a repubhc, it is not a democracy, that is the end, — no, but 
only the means." If Emerson is right, what is the end — 
what, at bottom, has the American tradition as its goal.^^ 
This question cannot be answered now; but a more intimate 
knowledge of our professed ideals and policies, our spiritual 
and political tendencies, will perhaps bring us to an earlier 
answer than we should otherwise attain. 

It need scarcely be said that, in collecting these expres- 
sions of our national and international consciousness, the 
editors have been obliged to omit, from so small a book, 
many significant utterances. Perhaps it likewise goes without 
saying that in arranging the selections under certain topics, 
the editors have sometimes assigned positions arbitrarily. 
These defects will not be serious so long as the total im- 
pression is reasonably near the truth. In the choice of 
matter to be included, a number of friends have generously 
assisted, particularly J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton, Professor 
of History, and James H. Hanford, Associate Professor of 
English, both of the University of North Carolina. Pro- 
fessor Hanford not only cooperated with the editors in 
drawing up the plan of the book, but also read the whole 
corpus of proof-sheets. 

N. F. 

W. W. P., Jr. 
August, 1917, 



CONTENTS 

I. LIBERTY AND UNION 

Liberty Speech Patrick Henry 3 

The Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson . . 7 

The Adoption of the Declaration of 

Independence Daniel Webster .... 9 

II. STATE AND NATION 

The Nature of the Union Daniel Webster .... 17 

The Nature of the Union John C. Calhoun ... 27 

Second Inaugural Address Abraham Lincoln . . 45 

How to Preserve the Local Self-Gov- 

ernment of the States Elihu Root 48 



III. AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Definition and Illustration 
First Inaugural Address Thomas Jefferson 



59 
65 
66 

72 
98 

104 
107 



Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln 

Abraham Lincoln R. W. Emerson . 

Contributions of the West to American 

Democracy F.J. Turner .... 

The Present Crisis J. R. Lowell 

Rise, O Days, from Your Fathomless 

Deeps Walt Whitman . . 

Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood . Walt Whitman . 

A Charter of Democracy Theodore Roosevelt . 114 

Education 

The American Scholar R.W. Emerson 133 

Democracy in Education P. P. Claxton 156 

The Supreme Test 

Can Democracy be Organized? Edwin A. Alderman 158 

Conscription Proclamation Woodrow Wilson. . . 175 

Americanism and the Foreign-Born. . . .Woodrow Wilson. . . 178 



vi CONTENTS 

IV. AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

Ideal of Isolation 
Counsel on Alliances George Washington . 185 

Ideal of Inter-American Association 

The Monroe Doctrine James Monroe 190 

The Emancipation of South America. . Fenr^/ Clay 194 

Pan- Americanism Robert Lansing 200 

Ideal of International Association 

A League to Enforce Peace A. Lavyrence Lowell. 207 

The Monroe Doctrine and the Program 

of the League to Enforce Peace George G. Wilson. . . 224 

The Conditions of Peace Woodrow Wilson . . . 233 

War for Democracy and Peace Woodrow Wilson. . . 242 

V. FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

The Sovereignty of the People Alexis de Tocqueville 257 

General Tendency of the Laws Alexis de Tocqueville 261 

The Activity of the Body Politic Alexis de Tocqueville 267 

The German and the American Temper. Kuno Francke 273 

The " Divine Average " G. Lowes Dickinson 282 

The Frame of National Government. . .James Bryce 285 

Criticism of the Federal System James Bryce 301 

Merits of the Federal System James Bryce 312 

The Cooperation of English-Speaking 

Peoples AHhur J. Balfour . . 322 



AMERICAN IDEALS 

I 

LIBERTY AND UNION 



OUR FIRST CENTURY 1 

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY 

It cannot be that men who are the seed 
Of Washington should miss fame's true applause; 
Franklin did plan us; Marshall gave us laws; 
And slow the broad scroll grew a people's creed — 
Union and Liberty! then at our need. 
Time's challenge coming, Lincoln gave it pause, 
', Upheld the double pillars of the cause, 
And dying left them whole — our crowning deed. 
Such was the fathering race that made all fast. 
Who founded us, and spread from sea to sea 
A thousand leagues the zone of liberty, 
And built for man this refuge from his past. 
Unkinged, unchurched, unsoldiered; shamed were we. 
Failing the stature that such sires forecast! 

* From Poems, 1903. Reprinted through the generous permission of The Macmillan 
Company. 



AMERICAN IDEALS 

LIBERTY SPEECH! 
PATRICK HENRY 

Mr. President: No man thinks more highly than I do 
of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy 
gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But differ- 
ent men often see the same subject in different lights; and, 
therefore, I hope that it will not be thought disrespectful 
to those gentlemen, if, entertaining as I do, opinions of a 
character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my 
sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for 
ceremony. The question before the House is one of awful 
moment to this country. For my own part I consider it as 
nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in 
proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the 
freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can 
hope to arrive at a truth, and fulfill the great responsibility 
which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back 
my opinion at such a time, through fear of giving offense, 
I should consider myself as guilty of treason toward my 
country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of 
Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. 

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illu- 
sions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful 
truth, and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms 
us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a 

* The speech delivered before the Virginia Convention of Delegates, 
March 23, 1775. 



V 



4 LIBERTY AND UNION 

great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to 
be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and 
having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern 
their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish 
of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; 
to know the worst and to provide for it. 

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided; and 
that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging 
the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish 
to know what there has been in the conduct of the British 
ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with 
which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves 
and the House? Is it that insidious smile with which our 
petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will 
prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be be- 
trayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious recep- 
tion of our petition comports wdth these warlike prepara- 
tions which cover our waters and darken our land. Are 
fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconcilia- 
tion? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled, 
that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us 
not deceive ourselves, sir. These are implements of war 
and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. 
I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its 
purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen 
assign any other possible motives for it? Has Great Brit- 
ain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for 
all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she 
has none. They are meant for us; they can be meant for 
no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us 
those chains which the British Ministry have been so long 
forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we 
try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last 
ten years. Have we anything new to offer on the subject? 



LIBERTY SPEECH 5 

Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of 
which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we re- 
sort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall 
we find which have not been already exhausted.'^ Let us 
not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we 
have done everything that could be done to avert the storm 
which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have re- 
monstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated our- 
selves before the throne, and have implored its interposition 
to arrest the tyrannical hands of the Ministry and Parlia- 
ment. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances 
have produced additional violences and insult; our suppli- 
cations have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, 
with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after 
these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and 
reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we 
wish to be free — if we mean to preserve inviolate those 
inestimable privileges for which we have been so long con- 
tending — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble strug- 
gle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we 
have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious 
object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight! I 
repeat it, sir, we must fight ! An appeal to arms and to the 
God of Hosts is all that is left us. 

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so 
formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? 
Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when 
we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be 
stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irres- 
olution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effec- 
tual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging 
the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies have bound 
us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper 
use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in 



6 LIBERTY AND UNION 

our power. Three millions of people, armed in the holy 
cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we 
possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can 
send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles 
alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies 
of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battles 
for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to 
the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no 
election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too 
late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in 
submission and slavery ! Our chains are forged ! Their 
clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston ! The war is 
inevitable — and let it come ! I repeat, sir, let it come ! 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may 
cry peace, peace — but there is no peace. The war is actu- 
ally begun ! The next gale that sweeps from the North will 
bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms ! Our brethren 
are already in the field ! Why stand we here idle? What is it 
that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so 
dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of 
chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not 
what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty, 
or give me death! 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

In CongresSy July 4, 1776 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 

When in the Course of human Events, it becomes neces- 
sary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which 
have connected them with another, and to assume among 
the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to 
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, 
a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that 
they should declare the Causes which impel them to the 
Separation. 

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are 
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Lib- 
erty and the Pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these 
Rights Governments are instituted among Men, deriving 
their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, That 
whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of 
these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish 
it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation 
on such Principles and organizing its Powers in such Form, as 
to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and 
Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments 
long established should not be changed for light and tran- 
sient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shown, 
that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are 
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms 
to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of 
Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Ob- 



8 LIBERTY AND UNION 

ject evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Des- 
potism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such 
Governmerft, and to provide new Guards for their future 
security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Col- 
onies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them 
to alter their former Systems of Government. The History 
of the present King of Great Britain is a History of repeated 
Injuries and Usurpations, all having in direct Object the 
Establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. . . . 
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States 
of America, in General Congress Assembled, appeahng to 
the Supreme Judge of Ihe World for the Rectitude of our 
Intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the 
good People of these Colonies, solemnly Publish and Declare, 
That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be. 
Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from 
all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political 
connexion between them and the State of Great-Britain, 
is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that as Free and 
Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, 
conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, 
and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent 
States may of right do. And for the support of this Declara- 
tion, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Provi- 
dence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our 
Fortunes, and our sacred Honour. 



THE ADOPTION OF THE DECLARATION 
OF INDEPENDENCE 1 

DANIEL WEBSTER 

Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, which was 
about to decide a question thus big with the fate of empire. 
Let us open their doors and look in upon their deliberations. 
Let us survey the anxious and careworn countenances, let 
us hear the firm-toned voices, of this band of patriots. 

Hancock presides over the solemn sitting; and one of 
those not yet prepared to pronounce for absolute Independ- 
ence is on the floor, and is urging his reasons foo* dissenting 
from the Declaration. 

** Let us pause ! This step, once taken, cannot be retraced. 
This resolution, once passed, will cut off all hope of recon- 
ciliation. If success attend the arms of England, we shall 
then be no longer Colonies, with charters and with privi- 
leges; these will all be forfeited by this act; and we shall be 
in the condition of other conquered people, at the mercy of 
the conquerors. For ourselves, we may be ready to run the 
hazard; but are we ready to carry the country to that length? 
Is success so probable as to justify it? Where is the military, 
where the naval power, by which we are to resist the whole 
strength of the arm of England, — for she will exert that 
strength to the utmost? Can we rely on the constancy and 

* From the "Oration on Adams and Jefferson," 1826. Regarding the 
famous imaginary speech of John Adams, Webster wrote, in 1846, "The 
speech was written by me in my house, in Boston, the day before the de- 
livery of the discourse in Faneuil Hall; a poor substitute, I am sure, if we 
could now see the speech actually made by Mr. Adams on that transcend- 
ently important occasion." 



10 LIBERTY AND. UNION 

perseverance of the people? or will they not act as the peo- 
ple of other countries have acted, and, wearied with a long 
War, submit, in the end, to a worse oppression? While we 
stand on our old ground, and insist on redress of grievances, 
we know we are right, and are not answerable for conse- 
quences. Nothing, then, can be imputed to us. But if we 
now change our object, carry our pretensions farther, and set 
up for absolute Independence, we shall lose the sympathy 
of mankind. We shall no longer be defending what we 
possess, but struggling for something which we never did 
possess, and which we have solemnly and uniformly dis- 
claimed all intention of pursuing, from the very outset of the 
troubles. Abandoning thus our old ground, of resistance 
only to arbitrary acts of oppression, the nations will believe 
the whole to have been mere pretence, and they will look 
on us, not as injured, but as ambitious subjects. I shudder 
before this responsibility. It will be on us, if, rehnquishing 
the ground on which we have stood so long, and stood so 
safely, we now proclaim Independence, and carry on the war 
for that object, while these cities burn, these pleasant fields 
whiten and bleach with the bones of their owners, and 
these streams run blood. It will be upon us, it will be upon 
us, if, failing to maintain this unseasonable and ill-judged 
declaration, a sterner despotism, maintained by military 
power, shall be established over our posterity, when we our- 
selves, given up by an exhausted, a harassed, a misled peo- 
ple, shall have expiated our rashness and atoned for our 
presumption on the scaffold." 

It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like these. 
We know his opinions, and we know his character. He 
would commence with his accustomed directness and 
earnestness. 

"Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I give my 
hand and my heart to this vote. It is true, indeed, that ill 



THE ADOPTION OF THE DECLARATION 11 

the beginning we aimed not at Independence. But there's 
a Divinity which shapes our ends. The injustice of England 
has driven us to arms; and, Winded to her own interest for 
our good, she has obstinately persisted, till Independence 
is now within our grasp. We have but to reach forth to 
it, and it is ours. Why, then, should we defer the Declara- 
tion? Is any man so weak as now to hope for a reconcilia- 
tion with England, which shall leave either safety to the 
country and its liberties, or safety to his own life and his 
own honor? Are not you. Sir, who sit in that chair, — is 
not he, our venerable colleague near you, — are you not 
both already the proscribed and predestined objects of pun- 
ishment and of vengeance? Cut off from all hope of royal 
clemency, what are you, what can you be, while the power 
of England remains, but outlaws? If we postpone Independ- 
ence, do we mean to carry on, or to give up, the war? Do 
we mean to submit to the measures of Parliament, Boston 
Port Bill and all? Do we mean to submit and consent that 
we ourselves shall be ground to powder, and our country 
and its rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not 
mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we intend to 
violate that most solemn obligation ever entered into by 
men, that plighting, before God, of our sacred honor to 
Washington, when, putting him forth to incur the dangers 
of war, as well as the political hazards of the times, we 
promised to adhere to him, in every extremity, with our 
fortunes and our lives? I know there is not a man here, 
who would not rather see a general conflagration sweep over 
the land, or an earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of 
that plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having 
twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that George 
Washington be appointed commander of the forces raised, 
or to be raised, for defence of American liberty, may my 
right hand forget her cunning, and my tongue cleave to the 



U LIBERTY AND UNION 

roof of my mouth, if I hesitate or waver in the support I 
give him. 

"The war, then, must go on. We must fight it through. 
And if the war must go on, why put off longer the Declara- 
tion of Independence? That measure will strengthen us. 
It will give us character abroad. The nations will then 
treat with us, which they never can do while we acknowl- 
edge ourselves subjects, in arms against our sovereign. Nay, 
I maintain, that England herself will sooner treat for peace 
with us on the footing of Independence, than consent, by 
repealing her acts, to acknowledge that her whole conduct 
towards us has been a course of injustice and oppression. 
Her pride will be less wounded by submitting to that course 
of things which now predestinates our Independence, than 
by yielding the points in controversy to her rebellious sub- 
jects. The former she would regard as the result of for- 
tune; the latter she would feel as her own deep disgrace. 
Why then, why then. Sir, do we not as soon as possible 
change this from a civil to a national war? And since we 
must fight it through, why not put ourselves in a state to 
enjoy all the benefits of victory, if we gain the victory? 

"If we fail, it can be no worse for us. But we shall not 
fail. The cause will raise up armies; the cause will create 
navies. The people, the people, if we are true to them, will 
carry us, and will carry themselves, gloriously, through this 
struggle. I care not how fickle other people have been 
found. I know the people of these Colonies, and I know that 
resistance to British aggression is deep and settled in their 
hearts and cannot be eradicated. Every Colony, indeed, 
has expressed its willingness to follow, if we but take the 
lead. Sir, the Declaration will inspire the people with in- 
creased courage. Instead of a long and bloody war for the 
restoration of privileges, for redress of grievances, for char- 
tered immunities, held under a British king, set before them 



THE ADOPTION OF THE DECLARATION 13 

the glorious object of entire Independence, and it wall 
breathe into them anew the breath of hfe. Read this Dec- 
laration at the head of the army; every sword will be 
drawn from its scabbard, and the solemn vow uttered, to 
maintain it, or to perish on the bed of honor. Publish it 
from the pulpit; religion will approve it, and the love of 
religious liberty will cling round it, resolved to stand with 
it, or fall with it. Send it to the public halls; proclaim it 
there; let them hear it who heard the first roar of the enemy's 
cannon; let them see it who saw their brothers and their 
sons fall on the field of Bunker Hill, and in the streets of 
Lexington and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in 
its support. 

"Sir, I know the uncertainty of human affaius, but I see, 
I see clearly, through this day's business. You and I, in- 
deed, may rue it. We may not live to the time when this 
Declaration shall be made good. We may die; die colonists; 
die slaves; die, it may be, ignominiously and on the scaf- 
fold. Be it so. Be it so. If it be the pleasure of Heaven that 
my country shall require the poor offering of my life, the 
victim shall be ready, at the appointed hour of sacrifice, 
come when that hour may. But while I do live, let me have 
a country, or at least the hope of a country, and that a free 
country. 

"But whatever may be our fate, be assured, be assured 
that this Declaration will stand. It may cost treasure, and 
it may cost blood; but it will stand, and it will richly com- 
pensate for both. Through the thick gloom of the present, 
I see the brightness of the future, as the sun in heaven. We 
shall make this a glorious, an immortal day. When we are 
in our graves, our children will honor it. They will cele- 
brate it with thanksgiving, with festivity, with bonfires, 
and illuminations. On its annual return they will shed tears, 
copious, gushing teajs, not of subjection and slavery, not 



14 LIBERTY AND UNION 

of agony and distress, but of exultation, of gratitude, and 
of joy. Sir, before God, I believe the hour is come. My 
judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in 
it. All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I ever 
hope, in this life, I am now ready here to stake upon it; and 
I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I 
am for the Declaration. It is my living sentiment, and by 
the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment. Inde- 
pendence nowy and Independence forever." 

And so that day shall be honored, illustrious prophet and 
patriot! so that day shall be honored, and as often as it re- 
turns, thy renown shall come along with it, and the glory 
of thy life, like the day of thy death, shall not fail from the 
remembrance of men. 



n 

STATE AND NATION 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION » 
DANIEL WEBSTER 

I MUST now beg to ask, sir. Whence is this supposed right 
of States derived? Where do they find the power to inter- 
fere with the laws of the Union? Sir, the opinion which the 
honorable gentleman maintains is a notion founded in a 
total misapprehension, in my judgment, of the origin of 
this Government, and of the foundation on which it stands. 
I hold it to be a popular Government, erected by the 
people; those who administer it responsible to the people; 
and itself capable of being amended and modified, just as 
the people may choose it should be. It is as popular, just 
as truly emanating from the people, as the State Govern- 
ments. It is created for one purpose; the State Govern- 
ments for another. It has its own powers; they have theirs. 
There is no more authority with them to arrest the opera- 
tion of a law of Congress, than with Congress to arrest 
the operation of their laws. We are here to administer a 
Constitution emanating immediately from the people, and 
trusted by them to our administration. It is not the crea- 
ture of the State Governments. 

This Government, sir, is the independent offspring of the 
popular will. It is not the creature of State Legislatures; 
nay, more, if the whole truth must be told, the people 
brought it into existence, established it, and have hitherto 
supported it, for the very purpose, amongst others, of im- 
posing certain salutary restraints on State sovereignties. 
The States cannot now make war; they cannot contract alli- 
ances; they cannot make, each for itself, separate regula- 
1 From Webster's " Reply to Hayne," January 26, 1830. 



18 STATE AND NATION 

tions of commerce; they cannot lay imposts; they cannot 
coin money. If this Constitution, sir, be the creature of 
State Legislatures, it must be admitted that it has ob- 
tained a strange control over the volitions of its creators. 

The people then, sir, erected this Government. They 
gave it a Constitution, and in that Constitution they have 
enumerated the powers which they bestow on it. They have 
made it a limited Government. They have defined its 
authority. They have restrained it to the exercise of such 
powers as are granted; and all others, they declare, are re- 
served to the States, or the people. But, sir, they have not 
stopped here. If they had, they would have accomplished 
but half their work. No definition can be so clear as to 
avoid the possibility of a doubt; no limitation so precise as 
to exclude all uncertainty. Who, then, shall construe this 
grant of the people. Who shall interpret their will, where 
it may be supposed they have left it doubtful? With whom 
do they repose this ultimate right of deciding on the powers of 
the Government? Sir, they have settled all this in the full- 
est manner. They have left it with the Government itself, 
in its appropriate branches. Sir, the very chief end, the main 
design, for which the whole Constitution was framed and 
adopted, was to establish a Government that should not 
be obliged to act through State agency, or depend on State 
opinion or State discretion. The people had had quite 
enough of that kind of government under the Confederation. 
Under that system, the legal action, the application of law 
to individuals, belonged exclusively to the States. Con- 
gress could only recommend; their acts were not of binding 
force till the States had adopted and sanctioned them. Are 
we in that condition still? Are we yet at the mercy of State 
discretion and State construction? Sir, if we are, then vain 
will be our attempt to maintain the Constitution under 
which we sit. 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 19 

But, sir, the people have wisely provided, in the Consti- 
tution itself, a proper, suitable mode and tribunal for set- 
tling questions of constitutional law. There are in the 
Constitution grants of powers to Congress, and restrictions 
on these powers. There are also prohibitions on the States. 
Some authority must, therefore, necessarily exist, having 
the ultimate jurisdiction to fix and ascertain the interpre- 
tation of these grants, restrictions, and prohibitions. The 
Constitution has itself pointed out, ordained, and estab- 
lished that authority. How has it accomplished this great 
and essential end? By declaring, sir, that "the Constitu- 
tion and the laws of the United States, made in pursuance 
thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land, anything in 
the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary not- 
withstanding." 

This, sir, was the first great step. By this the supremacy 
of the Constitution and the laws of the United States are 
declared. The people so will it. No State law is to be valid 
which comes in conflict with the Constitution, or any law 
of the United States passed in pursuance of it. But who 
shall decide this question of interference? To whom lies the 
last appeal? This, sir, the Constitution itself decides also, 
declaring "that the judicial powder shall extend to all cases 
arising under the Constitution and laws of the United 
States." These two provisions cover the whole ground. 
They are, in truth, the keystone of the arch! With these 
it is a Government; without them, a Confederation. In 
pursuance of these clear and express provisions, Congress 
established, at its first session, in the judicial act, a mode 
for carrying them into full effect, and for bringing all ques- 
tions of constitutional power to the final decision of the 
Supreme Court. It then, sir, became a Government. It 
then had the means of self -protection; and but for this it 
would, in all probability, have been now among things 



20 STATE AND NATION 

which are past. Having constituted the Government, and 
declared its powers, the people have further said that since 
somebody must decide on the extent of these powers, the 
Government shall itself decide, subject always, like other 
popular Governments, to its responsibility to the people. 
And now, sir, I repeat, how is it that a State Legislature 
acquires any power to interfere? Who or what gives them 
the right to say to the people, "We who are your agents 
and servants for one purpose, will undertake to decide 
that your other agents and servants, appointed by you 
for another purpose, have transcended the authority you 
gave them!" The reply would be, I think, not impertinent, 
"Who made you a judge over another's servants? To 
their own masters they stand or fall." 

Sir, I deny this power of State Legislatures altogether. 
It cannot stand the test of examination. Gentlemen may 
say that in an extreme case a State Government may pro- 
tect the people from intolerable oppression. Sir, in such a 
case the people might protect themselves without the aid 
of State Governments. Such a case warrants revolution. 
It must make, when it comes, a law for itseK. A nullifying 
act of a State Legislature cannot alter the case, nor make 
resistance any more lawful. In maintaining these senti- 
ments, sir, I am but asserting the rights of the people. I 
state what they have declared, and insist on their right to 
declare it. They have chosen to repose this power in the 
General Government, and I think it my duty to support it 
like other constitutional powers. 

For myself, sir, I do not admit the competency of South 
Carolina or any other State to prescribe my constitutional 
duty, or to settle, between me and the people, the validity 
of laws of Congress for which I have voted. I decline her 
umpirage. I have not sworn to support the Constitution 
according to her construction of the clauses. 1 have not 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 21 

stipulated by my oath of office 'or otherwise to come under 
any responsibility, except to the people, and those whom 
they have appointed to pass upon the question, whether 
laws, supported by my votes, conform to the Constitution of 
the country. And, sir, if we look to the general nature of the 
case, could anything have been more preposterous than to 
make a Government for the whole Union, and yet leave 
its power subject, not to one interpretation, but to thirteen 
or twenty-four interpretations? Instead of one tribunal, 
established by all, responsible to all, with power to decide 
for all, shall constitutional questions be left to four-and- 
twenty popular bodies, each at liberty to decide for itself, 
and none bound to respect the decisions of others; and each 
at liberty, too, to give a new Constitution on every new 
election of its own members? Would anything, with such 
a principle in it, or rather with such a destitution of all 
principle, be fit to be called a Government? No, sir. It 
should not be denominated a Constitution. It should be 
called, rather, a collection of topics for everlasting contro- 
versy; heads of debate for a disputatious people. It would 
not be a Government. It would not be adequate to any 
practical good, or fit for any country to live under. 

To avoid all possibility of being misunderstood, allow 
me to repeat again in the fullest manner that I claim no 
powers for the Government by forced or unfair construc- 
tion. I admit that it is a Government of strictly limited 
powers; of enumerated, specified, and particularized powers; 
and that whatsoever is not granted is withheld. But not- 
withstanding all this, and however the grant of powers may 
be expressed, its limit and extent may yet, in some cases, 
admit of doubt; and the General Government would be good 
for nothing, it would be incapable of long existing, if some 
mode had not been provided in which those doubts as 
they should arise might be peaceably but authoritatively 
solved. . . . 



22 STATE AND NATION 

The honorable gentleman argues that if this Government 
be the sole judge of the extent of its own powers, whether 
that right of judging be in Congress or the Supreme Court, 
it equally subverts State sovereignty. This the gentleman 
sees, or thinks he sees, although he cannot perceive how the 
right of judging in this matter, if left to the exercise of the 
State Legislatures, has any tendencies to subvert the Gov- 
ernment of the Union. The gentleman's opinion may be 
that the right ought not to have been lodged with the 
General Government; he may like better such a Constitu- 
tion as we should have under the right of State interfer- 
ence; but I ask him to meet me on the plain matter of fact. 
I ask him to meet me on the Constitution itself. I ask him 
if the power is not found there, clearly and visibly found 
there .f^ 

But, sir, what is this danger, and what are the grounds of 
it? Let it be remembered that the Constitution of the 
United States is not unalterable. It is to continue in its 
present form no longer than the people who established it 
shall choose to continue it. If they shall become convinced 
that they have made an injudicious or inexpedient parti- 
tion and distribution of power between the State Govern- 
ments and the General Government, they can alter that 
distribution at will. 

If anything be found in the National Constitution, either 
by original provision or subsequent interpretation, which 
ought not to be in it, the people know how to get rid of it. 
If any construction, unacceptable to them, be established 
so as to become practically a part of the Constitution, they 
will amend it at their own sovereign pleasure. But while 
people choose to maintain it as it is, while they are satisfied 
with it, and refuse to change it, who has given, or who can 
give, to the Legislature a right to alter it, either by in- 
terference, construction, or otherwise? Gentlemen do not 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 23 

seem to recollect that the people have any power to do any- 
thing for themselves. They imagine there is no safety for 
them any longer than they are under the close guardian- 
ship of the State Legislatures. Sir, the people have not 
trusted their safety, in regard to the general Constitution, 
to these hands. They have required other security, and 
taken other bonds. They have chosen to trust themselves, 
first, to the plain words of the instrument, and to such con- 
struction as the Government themselves, in doubtful cases, 
should put on their powers, under their oaths of office, 
and subject to their responsibility to them, just as the peo- 
ple of a State trust their own Governments with a similar 
power. Second, they have reposed their trust in the efficacy 
of frequent elections, and in their own power to remove 
their own servants and agents whenever they see cause. 
Third, they have reposed trust in the judicial power, which, 
in order that it might be trustworthy, they have made as 
respectable, as disinterested, and as independent as was 
practicable. Fourth, they have seen fit to rely, in case of 
necessity, or high expediency, on their known and ad- 
mitted power to alter or amend the Constitution, peace- 
ably and quietly, whenever experience shall point out de- 
fects or imperfections. And, finally, the people of the United 
States have at no time, in no way, directly or indirectly, 
authorized any State Legislature to construe or interpret 
their high instrument of government, much less to inter- 
fere, by their own power, to arrest its course and operation. 
If, sir, the people in these respects had done otherwise than 
they have done, their Constitution could neither have been 
preserved, nor would it have been worth preserving. And 
if its plain provisions shall now be disregarded, and these 
new doctrines interpolated in it, it will become as feeble 
and helpless a being as its enemies, whether early or more 
recent, could possibly desire. It will exist in every State 



24 STATE AND NATION 

but as a poor dependent on State permission. It must bor- 
row leave to be; and will be, no longer than State pleasure, 
or indiscretion, sees fit to grant the indulgence, and to pro- 
long its poor existence. 

But, sir, although there are fears, there are hopes also. 
The people have preserved this, their own Constitution, 
for forty years, and have seen their happiness, prosperity, 
and renown grow with its growth, and strengthen with its 
strength. They are now, generally, strongly attached to it. 
Overthrown by direct assault, it cannot be; evaded, under- 
mined, NULLIFIED, it will uot be, if we, and those who shall 
succeed us here, as agents and representatives of the people, 
shall conscientiously and vigilantly discharge the two great 
branches of our public trust, faithfully to preserve and 
wisely to administer it. 

Mr. President, I have thus stated the reasons of my dis- 
sent to the doctrines which have been advanced and main- 
tained. I am conscious of having detained you and the 
Senate much too long. I was drawn into the debate with 
no previous deliberation, such as is suited to the discussion 
of so grave and important a subject. But it is a subject of 
which my heart is full, and I have not been willing to sup- 
press the utterance of its spontaneous sentiments. I cannot, 
even now, persuade myself to relinquish it without express- 
ing once more my deep conviction that since it respects 
nothing less than the Union of the States, it is of most vital 
and essential importance to the public happiness. I profess, 
sir, in my career hitherto to have kept steadily in view the 
prosperity and honor of the whole country, and the pres- 
ervation of our Federal Union. It is to that Union we owe 
our safety at home, and our consideration and dignity 
abroad. It is to that Union that we are chiefly indebted 
for whatever makes us most proud of our country. The 
Union we reached only by the discipline of our virtues in the 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 25 

severe school of adversity. It has its origin in the necessi- 
ties of disordered finance, prostrate commerce, and ruined 
credit. Under its benign influences these great interests 
immediately awoke, as from the dead, and sprang forth 
with newness of life. Every year of its duration has teemed 
with fresh proofs of its utility and its blessings; and although 
our territory has stretched out wider and wider, and our 
population spread farther and farther, they have not out- 
run its protection or its benefits. It has been to us all a 
copious fountain of national, social, and personal happiness. 
I have not allowed myself, sir, to look beyond the Union, 
to see what might lie hidden in the dark recess behind. I 
have not coolly weighed the chances of preserving liberty 
when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken 
asunder. I have not accustomed myself to hang over the 
precipice of disunion, to see whether, with my short sight, 
I can fathom the depth of the abyss below; nor could I re- 
gard him as a safe counsellor in the affairs of this Govern- 
ment, whose thoughts should mainly be bent on consider- 
ing, not how the Union may be preserved, but how tolerable 
might be the condition of the people when it should be 
broken up and destroyed. While the Union lasts we have 
high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for 
us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the 
veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may 
not rise ! God grant that on my vision never may be opened 
what lies behind! When my eyes shall be turned to behold 
for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shin- 
ing on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glori- 
ous Union — on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; 
on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in 
fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance 
rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now 
known and honored throughout the earth, still full high 



26 STATE AND NATION 

advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original 
lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star ob- 
scured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interroga- 
tory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of 
delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterward"; 
but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, 
blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and 
over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, 
that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart — 
Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION * 
JOHN C. CALHOUN 

Resolved, That the people of the several States composing these 
United States are united as parties to a constitutional compact, 
to which the people of each State acceded as a separate and sov- 
ereign community, each binding itself by its own particular ratifi- 
cation; and that the Union, of which the said compact is the bond, 
is a Union between the States ratifying the same. 

Resolved^ That the people of the several States thus united by 
the constitutional compact, in forming that instrument, and in 
creating a General Government to carry into effect the objects 
for which it was formed, delegated to that Government, for that 
purpose, certain definite powers, to be exercised jointly, reserving, 
at the same time, each State to itself, the residuary mass of powers, 
to be exercised by its own separate government; and that, when- 
ever the General Government assumes the exercise of powers not 
delegated by the compact, its acts are unauthorized, void, and of 
no effect; and that the said Government is not made the final judge 
of the powers delegated to it, since that would make its discre- 
tion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, 
as in all other cases of compact among sovereign parties, with- 
out any common judge, each has an equal right to judge for itself, 
as well of the infraction, as of the mode and measure of redress. 

Resolved, That the assertions that the people of these United 
States, taken collectively as individuals, are now, or ever have 
been, united on the principle of the social compact, and, as such, 
are now formed into one nation or people, or that they have ever 
been so united, in any one stage of their political existence; that 
the people of the several States composing the Union have not, as 
members thereof, retained their sovereignty; that the allegiance of 
their citizens has been transferred to the General Government; 

1 From the reply of Calhoun to Webster, on the resolutions offered by 
the former respecting the rights of States; delivered in the Senate, Feb- 
ruary 2G, 1833. Considered in its entirety, this was perhaps Calhoun's 
most powerful speech in defense of State sovereignty. • 



28 STATE AND NATION 

that they have parted with the right of punishing treason through 
their respective State Governments; and that they have not the 
right of judging, in the last resort, as to the extent of powers re- 
served, and, of consequence, of those delegated, are not only with- 
out foundation in truth, but are contrary to the most certain and 
plain historical facts, and the clearest deductions of reason; and 
that all exercise of power on the part of the General Government, 
or any of its departments, deriving authority from such erroneous 
assumptions, must of necessity be unconstitutional — must tend 
directly and inevitably to subvert the sovereignty of the States 
— to destroy the federal character of the Union, and to rear on its 
ruins a consolidated government, without constitutional check or 
limitation, which must necessarily terminate in the loss of liberty 
itself. 

I WILL now return to the first resolution, to see how the 
issue stands between the Senator from Massachusetts [Web- 
ster] and myself. It contains three propositions. First, that 
the Constitution is a compact; second, that it was formed by 
the States, constituting distinct communities; and, lastly, 
that it is a subsisting and binding compact between the 
States. How do these three propositions now stand. ^ The 
first, I trust, has been satisfactorily established; the second, 
the Senator has admitted, faintly, indeed, but still he has 
admitted it to be true. This admission is something. It is so 
much gained by discussion. Three years ago even this was 
a contested point. But I cannot say that I thank him for 
the admission: we owe it to the force of truth. The fact 
that these States were declared to be free and independent 
States at the time of their independence; that they were 
acknowledged to be so by Great Britain in the treaty which 
terminated the War of the Revolution, and secured their 
independence; that they were recognized in the same charac- 
ter in the old Articles of the Confederation; and, finally, 
that the present Constitution was formed by a convention of 
the several States — afterwards submitted to them for their 
respective ratifications, and was ratified by them separately. 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 29 

each for itself, and each, by its own act, binding its citizens, 
— formed a body of facts too clear to be denied, and too 
strong to be resisted. 

It now remains to consider the third and last proposition 
contained in the resolution — that it is a binding and a 
subsisting compact between the States. The Senator was 
not explicit on this point. I understood him, however, as 
asserting that, though formed by the States, the Consti- 
tution was not binding between the States as distinct 
communities, but between the American people in the ag- 
gregate; who, in consequence of the adoption of the Consti- 
tution, according to the opinion of the Senator, became one 
people, at least to the extent of the delegated powers. This 
would, indeed, be a great change. All acknowledge that, 
previous to the adoption of the Constitution, the States 
constituted distinct and independent communities, in full 
possession of their sovereignty; and, surely, if the adoption 
of the Constitution was intended to effect the great and im- 
portant change in their condition which the theory of the 
Senator supposes, some evidence of it ought to be found in 
the instrument itself. It professes to be a careful and full 
enumeration of all the powers which the States delegated, 
and of every modification of their political condition. The 
Senator said that he looked to the Constitution in order to 
ascertain its real character; and, surely, he ought to look to 
the same instrument in order to ascertain what changes 
were, in fact, made in the political condition of the States 
and the country. But, with the exception of "We, the peo- 
ple of the United States," in the preamble, he has not 
pointed out a single indication in the Constitution, of the 
great change which, as he conceives, has been effected in 
this respect. 

Now, sir, I intend to prove that the only argument on 
which the gentleman relies on this point, must utterly fail 



30 STATE AND NATION 

him. I do not intend to go into a critical examination of the 
expression of the preamble to which I have referred. I do 
not deem it necessary. But if it were, it might be easily- 
shown that it is at least as applicable to my view of the 
Constitution as to that of the Senator; and that the whole 
of his argument on this point rests on the ambiguity of 
the term thirteen United States; which may mean certain 
territorial limits, comprehending within them the whole 
of the States and Territories of the Union. In this sense, 
the people of the United States may mean all the people 
living within these limits, without reference to the States 
or Territories in which they may reside, or of which they 
may be citizens; and it is in this sense only that the ex- 
pression gives the least countenance to the argument of 
the Senator.^ 

But it may also mean, the States united^ which inversion 
alone, without further explanation, removes the ambiguity 
to which I have referred. The expression, in this sense, obvi- 
ously means no more than to speak of the people of the 
several States in their united and confederated capacity; 
and, if it were requisite, it might be shown that it is only 
in this sense that the expression is used in the Constitution. 
But it is not necessary. A single argument will forever 
settle this point. Whatever may be the true meaning of 
the expression, it is not applicable to the condition of the 
States as they exist under the Constitution, but as it was 
under the old Confederation, before its adoption. The Con- 
stitution had not yet been adopted, and the States, in or- 
daining it, could only speak of themselves in the condition 
in which they then existed; and not in that in which they 
would exist under the Constitution. So that, if the argu- 

^ Calhoun did not know then, as he did later, the true history of the 
opening phrase in the preamble of the Constitution, — that in the form 
framed by the drafting committee the names of the States were enumer- 
ated and that this form was modified when Article VII was adopted. 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 31 

ment of the Senator proves anything, it proves, not (as be 
supposes) that the Constitution forms the American people 
into an aggregate mass of individuals, but that such was 
their political condition before its adoption, under the old 
Confederation, directly contrary to his argument in the 
previous part of this discussion. 

But I intend not to leave this important point, the last 
refuge of those who advocate consolidation, even on this 
conclusive argument. I have shown that the Constitution 
affords not the least evidence of the mighty change of the 
political condition of the States and the country, which the 
Senator supposed it effected; and I intend now, by the most 
decisive proof, drawn from the instrument itself, to show 
that no such change was intended, and that the people of 
the States are united under it as States and not as individ- 
uals. On this point there is a very important part of the 
Constitution entirely and strangely overlooked by the Sen- 
ator in this debate, as it is expressed in the first resolution, 
which furnishes conclusive evidence not only that the Con- 
stitution is a compact, but a subsisting compact, binding 
between the States. I allude to the seventh article, which 
provides that "the ratification of the conventions of nine 
States shall be sufficient for the establishment of this Con- 
stitution between the States so ratifying the same." Yes, 
*' between the States.'* These little words mean a volume — 
compacts, not laws, bind between States; and it here binds, 
not as between individuals, but between the States; the 
States ratifying; implying, as strong as language can make 
it, that the Constitution is what I have asserted it to be — 
a compact, ratified by the States, and a subsisting compact, 
binding the States ratifying it. 

But, sir, I will not leave this point, all-important in es- 
tablishing the true theory of our Government, on this argu- 
ment, as demonstrative and conclusive as I hold it to be. 



32 STATE AND NATION 

Another, not much less powerful, but of a different charac- 
ter, may be drawn from the tenth amended article, which 
provides that "the powers not delegated to the United 
States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the 
people." The article of ratification, which I have just cited, 
informs us that the Constitution, which delegates powers, 
was ratified by the States, and is binding between them. 
This informs us to whom the powers are delegated, — a 
most important fact in determining the point immediately 
at issue between the Senator and myself. According to his 
views, the Constitution created a union between individuals, 
if the solecism may be allowed, and that it formed, at least 
to the extent of the powers delegated, one people, and not a 
Federal Union of the States, as I contend; or, to express the 
same idea differently, that the delegation of powers was to 
the American people in the aggregate (for it is only by such 
delegation that they could be constituted one people), and 
not to the United States, — directly contrary to the article 
just cited, which declares that the powers are delegated to 
the United States. And here it is worthy of notice that 
the Senator cannot shelter himself under the ambiguous 
phrase, "to the people of the United States," under which 
he would certainly have taken refuge had the Constitution 
so expressed it; but fortunately for the cause of truth 
and the great principles of constitutional liberty for which 
I am contending, "people" is omitted: thus making the 
delegation of power clear and unequivocal to the United 
States, as distinct political communities, and conclusively 
proving that all the powers delegated are reciprocally 
delegated by the States to each other, as distinct political 
communities. 

So much for the delegated powers. Now, as all admit, 
and as it is expressly provided for in the Constitution, the 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 33 

reserved powers are reserved "to the States respectively, or 
to the people." None will pretend that, as far as they are 
concerned, we are one people, though the argument to 
prove it, however absurd, would be far more plausible than 
that which goes to show that we are one people to the extent 
of the delegated powers. This reservation "to the people" 
might, in the hands of subtle and trained logicians, be a 
peg to hang a doubt upon; and had the expression "to the 
people" been connected, as fortunately it is not, with the 
delegated instead of the reserved powers, we should not 
have heard of this in the present discussion. 

I have now established, I hope, beyond the power of con- 
troversy, every allegation contained in the first resolution 
— that the Constitution is a compact formed by the people 
of the several States, as distinct political communities, and 
subsisting and binding between the States in the same 
character; which brings me to the consideration of the con- 
sequences which may be fairly deduced, in reference to 
the character of our political system, from these established 
facts. 

The first, and most important is, they conclusively es- 
tablish that ours is a federal system — a system of States 
arranged in a Federal Union, each retaining its distinct 
existence and sovereignty. It is founded on compact; it is 
formed by sovereign communities, and is binding between 
them in their sovereign capacity. . , . 

If we compare our present system with the old Confed- 
eration, which all acknowledge to have been federal in its 
character, we shall find that it possesses all the attributes 
which belong to that form of government as fully and com- 
pletely as that did. In fact, in this f articular, there is but 
a single difference, and that not essential, as regards the 
point immediately under consideration, though very im- 
portant in other respects. The Confederation was the act 



S4 STATE AND NATION 

of the State Government, and formed a union of Govern- 
ments. The present Constitution is the act of the States 
themselves, or, which is the same thing, of the people of 
the several States, and forms a union of them as sovereign 
communities. The States, previous to the adoption of the 
Constitution, were as separate and distinct political bodies 
as the Governments which represent them, and there is 
nothing in the nature of things to prevent them from unit- 
ing under a compact, in a federal union, without being 
blended in one mass, any more than uniting the Govern- 
ments themselves, in like manner, without merging them 
in a single Government. To illustrate what I have stated 
by reference to ordinary transactions, the Confederation 
was a contract between agents — the present Constitution 
a contract between the principals themselves; or, to take a 
more analogous case, one is a league made by ambassadors ; 
the other, a league made by sovereigns — the latter no more 
tending to unite the parties into a single sovereignty than 
the former. The only difference is in the solemnity of the 
act and the force of the obligation. 

There, indeed, results a most important difference, under 
our theory of government, as to the nature and character 
of the act itself, whether executed by the States themselves 
or by their Governments; but as a result, as I have already 
stated, not at all affecting the question under consideration, 
but which will throw much light on a subject, in relation 
to which I must think the Senator from Massachusetts has 
formed very confused conceptions. 

The Senator dwelt much on the point that the present 
system is a constitution and a government, in contradis- 
tinction to the old Confederation, with a view of proving 
that the Constitution was not a compact. Now, I concede to 
the Senator that our present system is a constitution and a 
government; and that the former, the old Confederation, 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 35 

was not a constitution or government : not, however, for the 
reason which he assigned, that the former was a compact, 
and the latter not, but from the difference of the origin from 
which the two compacts are derived. xVccording to our 
American conception, the people alone can form constitu- 
tions or governments, and not their agents. It is this differ- 
ence, and this alone, which makes the distinction. Had the 
old Confederation been the act of the people of the several 
States, and not of their Governments, that instrument, im- 
perfect as it was, would have been a constitution, and the 
agency which it created to execute its powers, a govern- 
ment. This is the true cause of the difference between the 
two acts, and not that, in regard to which the Senator seems 
to be bewildered. 

There is another point on which this difference throws im- 
portant light, and which has been frequently referred to in 
debate on this and former occasions. I refer to the expres- 
sion in the preamble of the Constitution, which speaks of 
"forming a more perfect union," and in the letter of Gen- 
eral Washington, laying the draft of the Convention be- 
fore the old Congress, in which he speaks of "consolidat- 
ing the Union"; both of which I conceive to refer simply 
to the fact that the present Union, as already stated, is a 
union between the States themselves, and not a union Hke 
that which had existed between the Governments of the 
States. 

We will now proceed to consider some of the conclusions 
which necessarily follow from the facts and positions al- 
ready established. They enable us to decide a question of 
vital importance under our system : Where does sovereignty 
reside .f* If I have succeeded in establishing the fact that 
ours is a federal system, as I conceive I conclusively have, 
that fact of itself determines the question which I have pro- 
posed. It is of the very essence of such a system that the 



36 STATE AND NATION 

sovereignty is in the parts, and not in the whole; or, to use 
the language of Mr. Palgrave, the parts are the units in such 
a system, and the whole the multiple; and not the whole the 
unit and the parts the fraction. Ours, then, is a government 
of twenty-four sovereignties, united by a constitutional 
compact, for the purpose of exercising certain powers 
through a common government as their joint agent, and 
not a union of the twenty-four sovereignties into one, which, 
according to the language of the Virginia Resolutions, al- 
ready cited, would form a consolidation. And here I must 
express my surprise that the Senator from Virginia should 
avow himself the advocate of these very resolutions, when 
he distinctly maintained the idea of the union of the States 
in one sovereignty, which is expressly condemned by those 
resolutions as the essence of a consolidated government. 

Another consequence is equally clear, that, whatever 
modifications were made in the condition of the States 
under the present Constitution, they extended only to the 
exercise of their powers by compact, and not to the sov- 
ereignty itself, and are such as sovereigns are competent to 
make : it being a conceded point that it is competent to them 
to stipulate to exercise their powers in a particular manner, 
or to abstain altogether from their exercise, or to delegate 
them to agents, without in any degree impairing sovereignty 
itself. The plain state of the facts as regards our Govern- 
ment is, that these States have agreed by compact to exer- 
cise their sovereign powers jointly, as already stated; and 
that, for this purpose, they have ratified the compact in 
their sovereign capacity, thereby making it the Constitu- 
tion of each State, in no wise distinguished from their own 
separate Constitutions, but in the superadded obligation of 
compact — of faith mutually pledged to each other. In 
this compact, they have stipulated, aniong other things, 
that it may be amended by three-fourths of the States: that 



THE NATUEE OF THE UNION 37 

is, they have conceded to each other by compact the right 
to add new powers or to subtract old, by the consent of that 
proportion of the States, without requiring, as otherwise 
would have been the case, the consent of all : a modification 
no more inconsistent, as has been supposed, with their sov- 
ereignty, than any other contained in the compact. In fact, 
the provision to which I allude furnishes strong evidence 
that the sovereignty is, as I contend, in the States sever- 
ally, as the amendments are effected, not by any one three- 
fourths, but by any three-fourths of the States, indicating 
that the sovereignty is in each of the States. 

If these views be correct, it follows, as a matter of course, 
that the allegiance of the people is to their several States, 
and that treason consists in resistance to the joint authority 
of the States united, not, as has been absurdly contended, 
in resistance to the Government of the United States, which, 
by the provisions of the Constitution, has only the right of 
punishing. ... 

Having now said what I intended in relation to my 
first resolution, both in reply to the Senator from Mas- 
sachusetts, and in vindication of its correctness, I will 
now proceed to consider the conclusion drawn from it 
in the second resolution — that the General Government 
is not the exclusive and final judge of the extent of the 
powers delegated to it, but that the States, as parties 
of the compact, have a right to judge, in the last resort, of 
the infractions of the compact, and of the mode and meas- 
ure of redress. 

It can scarcely be necessary, before so enlightened a body, 
to premise that our system comprehends two distinct gov- 
ernments, — the General and State Governments, — which, 
properly considered, form but one; the former representing 
the joint authority of the States in their confederate capa- 
city, and the latter that of each State separately. I have 



38 STATE AND NATION 

premised this fact simply with a view of presenting dis- 
tinctly the answer to the argument offered by the Senator 
from Massachusetts to prove that the General Government 
has a final and exclusive right to judge, not only of its dele- 
gated powers, but also of those reserved to the States. That 
gentleman relies for his main argument on the assertion 
that a government — which he defines to be an organized 
body, endowed with both will, and power, and authority 
in propria vigore to execute its purpose — has a right in- 
herently to judge of its powers. It is not my intention to 
comment upon the definition of the Senator, though it 
would not be difficult to show that his ideas of government 
are not very American. My object is to deal with the con- 
clusion, and not the definition. Admit, then, that the Gov- 
ernment has the right of judging of its powers, for which he 
contends. How, then, will he withhold, upon his own prin- 
ciple, the right of judging from the State Governments, 
which he has attributed to the General Government? If it 
belongs to one, on his principle it belongs to both; and if to 
both, when they differ, the veto, so abhorred by the Sena- 
tor, is the necessary result: as neither, if the right be pos- 
sessed by both, can control the other. 

The Senator felt the force of this argument, and, in order 
to sustain his main position, he fell back on that clause of 
the Constitution which provides that "this Constitution, 
and the laws made in pursuance thereof, shall be the su- 
preme law of the land." 

This is admitted — no one has ever denied that the Con- 
stitution, and the laws made in pursuance of it, are of para- 
mount authority. But it is equally undeniable that laws 
not made in pursuance are not only not of paramount au- 
thority, but are of no authority whatever, being of them- 
selves null and void; which presents the question. Who 
are to judge whether the laws be or be not pursuant to the 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 39 

Constitution? And thus the difficulty, instead of being 
taken away, is removed but one step further back. This 
the Senator also felt, and has attempted to overcome, by 
setting up, on the part of Congress and the judiciary, the 
final and exclusive right of judging, both for the Federal 
Government and the States, as to the extent of their respec- 
tive powers. That I may do full justice to the gentleman, I 
will give his doctrine in his own words. He states : — 

That there is a supreme law, composed of the constitution, the 
laws passed in pursuance of it, and the treaties; but in cases com- 
ing before Congress, not assuming the shape of cases in law and 
equity, so as to be subjects of judicial discussion. Congress must 
interpret the constitution so often as it has occasion to pass laws; 
and in cases capable of assuming a judicial shape, the Supreme 
Court must be the final interpreter. 

Now, passing over this vague and loose phraseology, I 
would ask the Senator upon what principle can he concede 
this extensive power to the legislative and judicial depart- 
ments, and withhold it entirely from the Executive? If one 
has the right it cannot be withheld from the other. I would 
also ask him on what principle — if the departments of the 
General Government are to possess the right of judging, 
finally and conclusively, of their respective powers — on 
what principle can the same right be withheld from the 
State Governments, which, as well as the General Govern- 
ment, properly considered, are but departments of the same 
general system, and form together, properly speaking, but 
one government? This was a favorite idea of Mr. Macon, 
for whose wisdom I have a respect increasing with my ex- 
perience, and who I have frequently heard say that most 
of the misconceptions and errors in relation to our system 
originated in forgetting that they were but parts of the same 
system. I would further tell the Senator that, if this right 
be withheld from the State Governments; if this restraining 



40 STATE AND NATION 

influence, by which the General Government is confined 
to its proper sphere, be withdrawn, then that department 
of the Government from which he has withheld the right 
of judging of its own powers (the Executive) will, so far from 
being excluded, become the sole interpreter of the powers 
of the Government. It is the armed interpreter, with powers 
to execute its own construction, and without the aid of 
which the construction of the other departments will be 
impotent. 

But I contend that the States have a far clearer right to 
the sole construction of their powers than any of the depart- 
ments of the Federal Government can have. This power is 
expressly reserved, as I have stated on another occasion, 
not only against the several departments of the General 
Government, but against the United States themselves. I 
will not repeat the arguments which I then offered on this 
point, and which remain unanswered, but I must be per- 
mitted to offer strong additional proof of the views then 
taken, and which, if I am not mistaken, are conclusive on 
this point. It is drawn from the ratification of the Consti- 
tution by Virginia, and is in the following words: — 

We, the delegates of the people of Virginia, duly elected in pur- 
suance of a recommendation from the General Assembly, and now 
met in Convention, having fully and freely investigated and dis- 
cussed the proceedings of the Federal Convention, and being pre- 
pared, as well as the most mature deliberation hath enabled us, 
to decide thereon, do, in the name and in behalf of the people of 
Virginia, declare and make known that the powers granted under 
the Constitution, being derived from the people of the United 
States, may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be 
perverted to their injury or oppression, and that every power not 
granted thereby remains with them, and at their will; that, there- 
fore, no right of any denomination can be cancelled, abridged, re- 
strained, or modified by the Congress, by the Senate or House of 
Representatives, acting in any capacity, by the President or any 
department or officer of the United States, except in those in- 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 41 

stances in which power is given by the Constitution for those pur- 
poses; and that, among other essential rights, the Hberty of con- 
science and of the press cannot be cancelled, abridged, restrained, 
or modified by any authority of the United States. With these 
impressions, with a solemn appeal to the searcher of all hearts for 
the purity of our intentions, and under the conviction that what- 
soever imperfections may exist in the Constitution ought rather 
to be examined in the mode prescribed therein, than to bring the 
Union in danger by a delay, with the hope of obtaining amend- 
ments previous to the ratification — we, the said delegates, in the 
name and in the behalf of the people of Virginia, do by these pre- 
sents, assent to and ratify the Constitution recommended on the 
17th day of September, 1787, by the Federal Convention, for the 
government of the United States, hereby announcing to all those 
whom it may concern, that the said Constitution is binding upon 
the said people, according to an authentic copy hereto annexed, 
in the words following, etc. 

It thus appears that this sagacious State (I fear, how- 
ever, that her sagacity is not so sharp-sighted now as for- 
merly) ratified the Constitution, with an explanation as to 
her reserved powers; that they were powers subject to her 
own will, and reserved against every department of the 
General Government — legislative, executive, and judicial 
— as if she had a prophetic knowledge of the attempts 
now made to impair and destroy them: which explanation 
can be considered in no other light than as containing a con- 
dition on which she ratified, and, in fact, making part of 
the Constitution of the United States — extending as well 
to the other States as herself. I am no lawyer and it may 
appear to be presumption in me to lay down the rule of 
law which governs in such cases, in sC controversy with so 
distinguished an advocate as the Senator from Massachu- 
setts. But I shall venture to lay it down as a rule in such 
cases, which I have no fear that the gentleman will contra- 
dict, that, in case of a contract between several partners, 
if the entrance of one on condition be admitted, the condi- 



42 STATE AND NATION 

tion enures to the benefit of all the partners. But I do not 
rest the argument simply upon this view : Virginia proposed 
the tenth amended article, the one in question, and her 
ratification must be at least received as the highest evi- 
dence of its true meaning and interpretation. . . . 

I have now, I trust, shown satisfactorily that there is 
no provision in the Constitution to authorize the General 
Government, through any of its departments, to control the 
action of a State within the sphere of its reserved powers, 
and that, of course, according to the principle laid down by 
the Senator from Massachusetts himself, the Government 
of the States, as well as the General Government, has the 
right to determine the extent of their respective powers, 
without the right on the part of either to control the other. 
The necessary result is the veto, to which he so much ob- 
jects; and to get clear of which, he informs us, was the object 
for which the present Constitution was formed. I know not 
whence he has derived his information, but my impression 
is very different as to the immediate motives which led to 
the formation of that instrument. I have always under- 
stood that the principle was, to give to Congress the power 
to regulate commerce, to lay impost duties, and to raise a 
revenue for the payment of the public debt and the expenses 
of the Government; and to subject the action of the citizens 
individually to the operation of the laws, as a substitute 
for force. If the object had been to get clear of the veto of 
the States, as the Senator states, the Convention certainly 
performed their work in a most bungling manner. There 
was unquestionably a large party in that body, headed by 
men of distinguished talents and influence, who commenced 
early and worked earnestly to the last, to deprive the States 
— not directly, for that would have been too bold an at- 
tempt — but indirectly — of the veto. The good sense of 
the Convention, however, put down every effort, however 



THE NATURE OF THE UNION 43 

disguised and perseveringly made. I do not deem it neces- 
sary to give, from the journals, the history of these various 
and unsuccessful attempts — though it would afford a very 
instructive lesson. It is sufficient to say that it was at- 
tempted by proposing to give Congress power to annul the 
acts of the States which they might deem inconsistent with 
the Constitution; to give to the President the power of 
appointing the governors of the States, with a view of veto- 
ing state laws through his authority; and, finally, to give 
to the judiciary the power to decide controversies between 
the States and the General Government : all of vwhich failed 
— fortunately for the liberty of the country — utterly and 
entirely failed; and in their failure we have the strongest 
evidence that it was not the intention of the Convention to 
deprive the States of the veto power. Had the attempt to 
deprive them of this power been directly made, and failed, 
every one would have seen and felt that it would furnish 
conclusive evidence in favor of its existence. Now, I would 
ask, What possible difference can it make in what form this 
attempt was made? whether by attempting to confer on 
the General Government a power incompatible with the 
exercise of the veto on the part of the States, or by attempt- 
ing directly to deprive them of the right to exercise it? We 
have thus direct and strong proof that, in the opinion of 
the Convention, the States, unless deprived of it, possess 
the veto power — or, what is another name for the same 
thing, the right of nullification. I know that there is a di- 
versity of opinion among the friends of State Rights in re- 
gard to this power, which I regret, as I cannot but consider 
it as a power essential to the protection of the minor and 
local interests of the community, and the liberty and the 
union of the country. It is the very shield of State Rights, 
and the only power by which that system of injustice against 
which we have contended for more than thirteen years can 



44 STATE AND NATION 

be arrested : a system of hostile legislation — of plundering 
by law, which must necessarily lead to a conflict of arms if 
not prevented. 

But I rest the right of a State to judge of the extent of its 
reserved powers, in the last resort, on higher grounds — 
that the Constitution is a compact, to which the States are 
parties in their sovereign capacity; and that, as in all other 
cases of compact between parties having no common um- 
pire, each has a right to judge for itself. To the truth of 
this proposition the Senator from Massachusetts has him- 
self assented, if the Constitution itself be a compact — and 
that it is, I have shown, I trust, beyond the possibility of 
a doubt. Having established this point, I now claim, as I 
stated I would do in the course of the discussion, the ad- 
missions of the Senator, and, among them, the right of se- 
cession and nullification, which he conceded would neces- 
sarily follow if the Constitution be indeed a compact. 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS^ 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Fellow-Countrymen, At this second appearance to 
take the oath of the Presidential oflSce, there is less occasion 
for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a 
statement, somewhat in detail, of a course to be pursued, 
seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four 
years, during which public declarations have been constantly 
called forth on every point and phase of the great contest 
which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies 
of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The pro- 
gress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as 
well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, rea- 
sonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope 
for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago, all 
thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. 
All dreaded it — all sought to avert it. While the inaugural 
address was being delivered from this place, devoted al- 
together to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents 
were in the city seeking to destroy it without war — seeking 
to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. 
Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make 
war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would 
accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, 
not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in 
the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar 
1 Delivered at the Capitol, March 4, 1865. 



46 STATE AND NATION 

and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, some- 
how, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and 
extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents 
would rend the Union, even by war; while the Government 
claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial 
enlargement of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the 
duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated 
that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, 
the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier 
triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 
Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and 
each invokes his aid against the other. It may seem strange 
that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; 
but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers 
of both could not be answered — that of neither has been 
answered fully. 

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe unto the 
world because of offenses ! for it must needs be that offenses 
come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." 
If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those 
offenses which, in the Providence of God, must needs come, 
but which, having continued through his appointed time, he 
now wills to remove, and that he gives to both North and 
South this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom 
the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure 
from those divine attributes which the believers in a living 
God always ascribe to him? Fondly do we hope — fervently 
do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily 
pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the 
wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years 
of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of 
blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn 



SECOND INAUGURAL ADDHESS 47 

with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still 
it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and 
righteous altogether.** 

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firm- 
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us 
strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation*s 
wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and 
for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve 
and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and 
with all nations. 



HOW TO PRESERVE THE LOCAL SELF- 
GOVERNMENT OF THE STATES 1 

ELIHU ROOT 

This gathering peculiarly represents two ancient Com- 
monwealths, each looking back to a century and a half of 
colonial history before the formation of the American Union, 
each possessed of strong individuality, derived from the 
long practice of self-government, and both conspicuous 
among all the States for leadership in population and wealth, 
for commerce and manufacture, for art and science, and for 
the priceless traditions of great citizens in former genera- 
tions. It seems appropriate to make here some observations 
upon a subject which is much in the minds of thoughtful 
Americans in these days. 

What is to be the future of the States of the Union under 
our dual system of constitutional government? 

The conditions under which the clauses of the Constitu- 
tion distributing powers to the National and State Govern- 
ments are now and henceforth to be applied, are widely 
different from the conditions which were or could have been 
within the contemplation of the framers of the Constitution, 
and widely different from those which obtained during the 
early years of the Republic. When the authors of The Feder- 
alist argued and expounded the reasons for union and the 
utility of the provisions contained in the Constitution, each 
separate colony transformed into a State was complete in 

1 A speech at the dinner of the Pennsylvania Society in New York, 
December 12, 1906. Reprinted, through the generous permission of the 
Harvard University Press, from Addresses on Government and Citizenship. 
(1916.) 



SELF-GOVERNMENT OF THE STATES 49 

itself and sufficient to itself, except as to a few exceedingly 
simple external relations of State to State and to foreign 
nations; from the origin of production to the final consump- 
tion of the product, from the birth of a citizen to his death, 
the business, the social and the political life of each separate 
community began and ended, for the most part, within the 
limits of the State itself; the long time required for travel 
and communications between the different centers of popu- 
lation, the difficulties and hardships of long and laborious 
journeys, the slowness of the mails, and the enormous cost of 
transporting goods, kept the people of each State tributary 
to their own separate colonial center of trade and influence, 
and kept their activities within the ample and sufficient 
jurisdiction of the local laws of their State. The fear of the 
fathers of the Republic was that these separate and self- 
sufficient communities would fall apart, that the Union 
would resolve into its constituent elements, or that, as it 
grew in population and area, it would split up into a number 
of separate confederacies. Few of the men of 1787 would- 
have deemed it possible that the Union they were forming 
could be maintained among eighty-five millions of people, 
spread over the vast expanse from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
and from the Lakes to the Gulf. 

Three principal causes have made this possible. 

One cause has been the growth of a National sentiment, 
which was at first almost imperceptible. The very difficul- 
ties and hardships to which our Nation was subjected in its 
early years, the injuries to our commerce, and the insults 
and indignities to our flag on the part of both of the con- 
testants in the great Napoleonic wars, served to keep the 
Nation and National interests and National dignity con- 
stantly before the minds and in the feelings of the people. 
As the tide of emigration swept westward, new States were 
formed of citizens who looked back to the older States as the 



50 STATE AND NATION 

homes of their childhood and their affection and the origin 
of their laws and customs, and who never had the peculiar 
and special, separate political life of the colonies. The Civil 
War settled the supremacy of the Nation throughout the 
territory of the Union, and its sacrifices sanctified and made 
enduring that National sentiment. Our country as a whole, 
the noble and beloved land of every citizen of every State, 
has become the object of pride and devotion among all our 
people, North and South, within the limits of the proud old 
colonial Commonwealths, throughout the vast region where 
Burr once dreamed of a separate empire dominating the 
valley of the Mississippi, and upon the far-distant shores of 
the Pacific; and by the side of this strong and glowing loyalty 
to the Nation, sentiment for the separate States has be- 
come dim and faint in comparison. 

The second great influence has been the knitting together, 
in ties of common interest, of the people forming the once 
separate communities through the working of free trade 
among the States. Never was a concession, dictated by 
enlightened judgment for the common benefit, more richly 
repaid than that by which the States surrendered in the 
Federal Constitution the right to lay imposts or duties on 
imports or exports without the consent of Congress. To it we 
owe the domestic market for the products of our farms and 
forests and mines and factories without a parallel in history, 
and an internal trade which already exceeds the entire for- 
eign trade of all the rest of the world; and to it we owe in a 
high degree the constant drawing together of all parts of our 
vast and diversified country in the bonds of common in- 
terest and in the improving good understanding and kindly 
feeling of frequent intercourse. 

The third great cause of change is the marvelous develop- 
ment of facilities for travel and communication produced 
by the inventions and discoveries of the past century. The 



SELF-GOVERNMENT OF THE STATES 51 

swift trains that pass over our two hundred and twenty 
thousand miles of railroad, the seventy millions of messages 
that flash over the more than fourteen hundred thousand 
miles of telegraph wires, the conversations across the vast 
spaces through our more than four million four hundred 
thousand telephone instruments, take no note of State 
lines; they have broken down the barriers between the sepa- 
rate communities and they have led to a reorganization of 
the business and social life of the people of the United States 
along lines which, for the most part, altogether ignore the 
boundaries of the States. I left the borders of Virginia this 
afternoon and traversed Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylva- 
nia, and New Jersey to the State of New York, and, bar- 
ring accident, I shall breakfast to-morrow morning again 
on the shore of the Potomac. The time required for this 
journey would hardly have suflficed for an ordinary carriage 
drive from the adjoining County of Westchester a hundred 
years ago. Any one of us can go now into a neighboring room 
in this hotel and talk with a friend in Boston or Chicago and 
recognize his voice and transact business which formerly 
would have required months to accomplish, if it could have 
been done at all. The lines of trade, of financial operation, 
of social intercourse, of thought and opinion that radiate 
from the great centers of life in our country such as Boston 
and New York, and Philadelphia and Baltimore, and Chi- 
cago and St. Louis, and New Orleans and San Francisco, 
and many another great city, are perfectly regardless of 
State distinctions. Our whole life has swung away from the 
old State centers and is crystallizing about National centers; 
the farmer harvests his grain and fattens his cattle, not as 
formerly, with reference to the wants of his own home com- 
munity, but for markets thousands of miles away; the man- 
ufacturer operates his mills and his factories to meet the 
needs of far-distant consumers; the merchant has his cus- 



52 STATE AND NATION 

tomers in many States; all — the farmer, the manufacturer, 
the merchant, the laborer — look for the supplies of their 
food and clothing, not to the resources of the home farm, or 
village, but to the resources of the whole continent. The 
people move in great throngs to and fro from State to State 
and across States; the important news of each community is 
read at every breakfast- table throughout the country; the 
interchange of thought and sentiment and information is 
universal; in the wide range of daily life and activity and in- 
terest the old lines between the States and the old barriers 
which kept the States as separate communities are com- 
pletely lost from sight. The growth of National habits in 
the daily life of a homogeneous people keeps pace with the 
growth of National sentiment. 

Such changes in the life of the people cannot fail to pro- 
duce corresponding political changes. Some of those changes 
can be plainly seen now in progress. It is plainly to be seen 
that the people of the country are coming to the conclusion 
that in certain important respects the local laws of the sepa- 
rate States, which were adequate for the due and just regu- 
lation and control of the business which was transacted, and 
the activity which began and ended within the limits of the 
several States, are inadequate for the due and just control 
of the business and activities which extend throughout all 
the States, and that such power of regulation and control is 
gradually passing into the hands of the National Govern- 
ment. Sometimes by an assertion of the interstate com- 
merce power, sometimes by an assertion of the taxing power, 
the National Government is taking up the performance of 
duties which under the changed conditions the separate 
States are no longer capable of adequately performing. The 
Federal Anti-Trust Law, the Anti-Rebate Law, the Rail- 
road Rate Law, the Meat-Inspection Law, the Oleomar- 
garine Law, the Pure-Food Law, are examples of the pur- 



SELF-GOVERNMENT OF THE STATES 53 

pose of the people of the United States to do through the 
agency of the National Government the things which the 
separate State Governments formerly did adequately but 
no longer do adequately. The end is not yet. The process 
that interweaves the life and action of the people in every 
section of our country with the people in every other section, 
continues and will continue with increasing force and effect; 
we are urging forward in a development of business and so- 
cial life which tends more and more to the obliteration of 
State lines and the decrease of State power as compared with 
National power; the relations of the business over which 
the Federal Government is assuming control, of interstate 
transportation with State transportation, of interstate com- 
merce with State commerce, are so intimate and the sepa- 
ration of the two is so impracticable, that the tendency is 
plainly toward the practical control of the National Gov- 
ernment over both. New projects of National control are 
mooted; control of insurance, uniform divorce laws, child- 
labor laws, and many others affecting matters formerly en- 
tirely within the cognizance of the States are proposed. 

With these changes and tendencies, in what way can the 
power of the States be preserved.? 

I submit to your judgment, and I desire to press upon you 
with all the earnestness I possess, that there is but one way 
in which the States of the Union can maintain their power 
and authority under the conditions which are now before us, 
and that way is by an awakening on the part of the States 
to a realization of their own duties to the country at large. 
Under the conditions which now exist, no State can live unto 
itself alone, and regulate its affairs with sole reference to its 
own treasury, its own convenience, its own special interests. 
Every State is bound to frame its legislation and its admin- 
istration with reference not only to its own special affairs, 
but with reference to the effect upon all its sister States, as 



54 STATE AND NATION 

every individual is found to regulate his conduct with some 
reference to its effect upon his neighbors. The more popu- 
lous the community and the closer individuals are brought 
together, the more imperative becomes the necessity which 
constrains and limits individual conduct. If any State is 
maintaining laws which afford opportunity and authority 
for practices condemned by the public sense of the whole 
country, or laws which, through the operation of our mod- 
ern system of communications and business, are injurious 
to the interests of the whole country, that State is violating 
the conditions upon which alone its power can be preserved. 
If any State maintains laws which promote and foster the 
enormous overcapitalization of corporations condemned by 
the people of the country generally; if any State maintains 
laws designed to make easy the formation of trusts and the 
creation of monopolies; if any State maintains laws which 
permit conditions of child labor revolting to the sense of 
mankind; if any State maintains laws of marriage and di- 
vorce so far inconsistent with the general standard of the 
Nation as violently to derange the domestic relations, which 
the majority of the States desire to preserve, that State is 
promoting the tendency of the people of the country to seek 
relief through the National Government and to press for- 
ward the movement for National Control and the extinction 
of local control. The intervention of the National Govern- 
ment in many of the matters which it has recently under- 
taken would have been wholly unnecessary if the States 
themselves had been alive to their duty toward the general 
body of the country. 

It is useless for the advocates of State rights to inveigh 
against the supremacy of the constitutional laws of the 
United States or against the extension of National authority 
in the fields of necessary control where the States themselves 
fail in the performance of their duty. The instinct for self- 



SELF-GOVERNMENT OF THE STATES 55 

government among the people of the United States is too 
strong to permit them long to respect any one's right to ex- 
ercise a power which he fails to exercise. The governmental 
control which they deem just and necessary they will have. 
It may be that such control would^ better be exercised in 
particular instances by the Gove^^nments of the States, but 
the people will have the control they need, either from the 
States or from the National Government; and if the States 
fail to furnish it in due measure, sooner or later construc- 
tions of the Constitution will be found to vest the power 
where it will be exercised — in the National Government. 
The true and only way to preserve State authority is to be 
found in the awakened conscience of the States, their broad- 
ened views and higher standard of responsibility to the 
general public; in effective legislation by the States in con- 
formity to the general moral sense of the country; and in 
the vigorous exercise for the general public good of that 
State authority which is to be preserved. 



m 

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS ^ 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 

Friends and Fellow-Citizens: Called upon to under- 
take the duties of the first executive office of our country, I 
avail myself of the presence of that portion of my fellow- 
citizens which is here assembled to express my grateful 
thanks for the favor with which they have been pleased to 
look toward me, to declare a sincere consciousness that the 
task is above my talents, and that I approach it with those 
anxious and awful presentiments which the greatness of the 
charge and the weakness of my powers so justly inspire. A 
rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, travers- 
ing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, 
engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and for- 
get right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach 
of mortal eye — when I contemplate these transcendent ob- 
jects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this 
beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of 
this day, I shrink from the contemplation, and humble my- 
self before the magnitude of the undertaking. Utterly, in- 
deed, should I despair did not the presence of many whom I 
here see remind me that in the other high authorities pro- 
vided by our Constitution I shall find resources of wisdom, 
of virtue, and of zeal on which to rely under all difficulties. 
To you, then, gentlemen, who are charged with the sovereign 
functions of legislation, and to those associated with you, 
I look with encouragement for that guidance and support 
which may enable us to steer with safety the vessel in which 

» Delivered at Washington, D.C., March 4, 1801. 



60 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

we are all embarked amidst the conflicting elements of a 
troubled world. 

During the contest of opinion through which we have 
passed, the animation of discussion and of exertions has 
sometimes worn an aspect which might impose on strangers 
unused to think freely and to speak and to write what they 
think; but this being now decided by the voice of the nation, 
announced according to the rules of the Constitution, all 
will, of course, arrange themselves under the will of the law, 
and unite in common efforts for the common good. All, 
too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the 
will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will, to be 
rightful, must be reasonable; that the minority possess their 
equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate 
which would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, 
unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social 
intercourse that harmony and affection without which lib- 
erty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us re- 
flect that, having banished from our land that religious intol- 
erance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we 
have yet gained little if we countenance a political intoler- 
ance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and 
bloody persecutions. During the throes and convulsions of 
the ancient world, during the agonizing spasms of infuri- 
ated man seeking through blood and slaughter his long-lost 
liberty, it was not wonderful that the agitation of the billows 
should reach even this distant and peaceful shore; that this 
should be more felt and feared by some and less by others, 
and should divide opinions as to measures of safety. But 
every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. 
We have called by different names brethren of the same 
principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. 
If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this 
Union or to change its republican form, let them stand un- 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 61 

disturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of 
opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat 
it. I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a re- 
publican government cannot be strong, that this Govern- 
ment is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, 
in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a govern- 
ment which has so far kept us free and firm, on the theoretic 
and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best 
hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I 
trust not. I believe this, on the contrary, the strongest Gov- 
ernment on earth. I believe it the only one w^here every 
man, at the call of the law, would fly to the standard of the 
law, and would meet invasions of the public order as his own 
personal concern. Sometimes it is said that man cannot be 
trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be 
trusted with the government of others? Or have we found 
angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history an- 
swer this question. 

Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own 
Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union 
and representative government. Kindly separated by na- 
ture and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one 
quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degra- 
dations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with 
room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and 
thousandth generation; entertaining a due sense of our 
equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisi- 
tions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our 
fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our ac- 
tions and their sense of them; enlightened by a benign re- 
ligion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet 
all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, grati- 
tude, and the love of man; acknowledging and adoring an 
overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves 



62 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater 
happiness hereafter — with all these blessings, what more 
is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people? 
Still one thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and frugal 
Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one 
another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their 
own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not 
take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This 
is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to 
close the circle of our felicities. 

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties 
which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is 
proper that you should understand what I deem the essential 
principle of our Government, and consequently those which 
ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them 
within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the 
general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and 
exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, 
religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friend- 
ship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the 
support of the State governments in all their rights, as the 
most competent administrations for our domestic concerns 
and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; 
the preservation of the Central Government in its whole 
constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at 
home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of elec- 
tion by the people — a mild and safe corrective of abuses 
which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable 
remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the de- 
cisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from 
which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and im- 
mediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our 
best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till 
regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over 



FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS 63 

the military authority; economy in the public expense, that 
labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our 
debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encourage- 
ment of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the 
diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses 
at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom 
of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of 
the habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected. 
These principles form the bright constellation which has 
gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revo- 
lution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood 
of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They 
should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic 
instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of 
those we trust; and should we wander from them in mo- 
ments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps 
and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, 
and safety. 

I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have as- 
signed me. With experience enough in subordinate offices 
to have seen the difficulties of this, the greatest of all, I have 
learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect 
man to retire from this station with the reputation and the 
favor which bring him into it. Without pretensions to that 
high confidence you reposed in our first and greatest revolu- 
tionary character, whose preeminent services had entitled 
him to the first place in his country's love and destined for 
him the fairest page in the volume of faithful history, I ask 
so much confidence only as may give firmness and effect to 
the legal administration of your affairs. I shall often go wrong 
through defect of judgment. When right, I shall often be 
thought wrong by those whose positions will not command a 
view of the whole ground. I ask your indulgence for my own 
errors, which will never be intentional, and your support 



64 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

against the errors of others, who may condemn what they 
would not if seen in all its parts. The approbation implied by 
your suffrage is a great consolation to me for the past, and 
my future solicitude will be to retain the good opinion of 
those who have bestowed it in advance, to conciliate that of 
others by doing them all the good in my power, and to be in- 
strumental to the happiness and freedom of all. 

Relying, then, on the patronage of your good-will, I ad- 
vance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it 
whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is 
in your power to make. And may that Infinite Power which 
rules the destinies of the universe lead our councils to what 
is best, and give them a favorable issue for your peace and 
prosperity. 



GETTYSBURG ADDRESS^ 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and 
dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether 
that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, 
can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that 
war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a 
final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that 
that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper 
that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense we cannot dedicate — we cannot 
consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave 
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated 
it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world 
will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it 
can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, 
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which 
they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It 
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remain- 
ing before us — that from these honored dead we take in- 
creased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last 
full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that 
these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, 
under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that 
government of the people, by the people, for the people, 
shall not perish from the earth. 

* Delivered at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, November 19, 1863. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN i \ 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON ' 

We meet under the gloom of a calamity which darkens 
down over the minds of good men in all civil society, as the 
fearful tidings travel over sea, over land, from country to 
country, like the shadow of an uncalculated eclipse over the 
planet. Old as history is, and manifold as are its tragedies, 
I doubt if any death has caused so much pain to mankind 
as this has caused, or will cause, on its announcement; and 
this, not so much because nations are by modem arts brought 
so closely together, as because of the mysterious hopes and 
fears which, in the present day, are connected with the name 
and institutions of America. 

In this country, on Saturday, every one was struck dumb, 
and saw at first only deep below deep, as he meditated on 
the ghastly blow. And perhaps, at this hour, when the coflBn 
which contains the dust of the President sets forward on its 
long march through mourning States, on its way to his home 
in Illinois, we might well be silent, and suffer the awful voices 
of the time to thunder to us. Yes, but that first despair was 
brief: the man was not so to be mourned. He was the most 
active and hopeful of men; and his work had not perished: 
but acclamations of praise for the task he had accomplished 
burst out into a song of triumph, which even tears for his 
death cannot keep down. 

The President stood before us as a man of the people. He 
was thoroughly American, had never crossed the sea, had 
never been spoiled by English insularity or French dissipa- 

* Spoken at the funeral services held in Concord, April 19, 1865. 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 67 

tion; a quite native, aboriginal man, as an acorn from the 
oak; no aping of foreigners, no frivolous accomplishments, 
Kentuckian born, working on a farm,* a, flatboatman, a cap- 
tain in the Black Hawk War, a country lawyer, a represent- 
ative in the rural Legislature of Illinois; — on such modest 
foundations the broad structure of his fame was laid. How 
slowly, and yet by happily prepared steps, he came to his 
place. All of us remember — it is only a history of five or 
six years — the surprise and the disappointment of the coun- 
try at his first nomination by the Convention at Chicago. 
Mr. Seward, then in the culmination of his good fame, was 
the favorite of the Eastern States. And when the new and 
comparatively unknown name of Lincoln was announced 
(notwithstanding the report of the acclamations of that 
Convention), we heard the result coldly and sadly. It 
seemed too rash, on a purely local reputation, to build so 
grave a trust in such anxious times; and men naturally 
talked of the chances in politics as incalculable. But it 
tm-ned out not to be chance. The profound good opinion 
which the people of Illinois and of the West had conceived 
of him, and which they had imparted to their colleagues 
that they also might justify themselves to their constituents 
at home, was not rash, though they did not begin to know 
the riches of his worth. 

A plain man of the people, an extraordinary fortune at- 
tended him. He offered no shining qualities at the first en- 
counter; he did not offend by superiority. He had a face and 
manner which disarmed suspicion, which ins'pired confidence, 
which confirmed good-will. He was a man without vices. 
He had a strong sense of duty, which it was very easy for 
him to obey. Then, he had what farmers call a long head; 
was excellent in working out the sum for himself; in arguing 
his case and convincing you fairly and firmly. Then, it 
turned out that he was a great worker; had prodigious faculty 



t» AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

of performance; worked easily. A good worker is so rare; 
everybody has some disabling quality. In a host of young 
men that start together and promise so many brilliant lead- 
ers for the next age, each fails on trial; one by bad health, 
one by conceit, or by love of pleasure, or lethargy, or an ugly 
temper, — each has some disqualifying fault that throws 
him out of the career. But this man was sound to the core, 
cheerful, persistent,^ all right for labor, and liked nothing 
so well. 

Then, he had a vast good-nature, which made him toler- 
ant and accessible to all; fair-minded, leaning to the claim 
of the petitioner; affable, and not sensible to the affliction 
which the innumerable visits paid to him when President 
would have brought to any one else. And how this good- 
nature became a noble humanity, in many a tragic case 
which the events of the war brought to him, every one will 
remember; and with what increasing tenderness he dealt 
when a whole race was thrown on his compassion. The 
poor negro said of him, on an impressive occasion, "Massa 
Linkum am ebery where.'* 

Then his broad good-humor, running easily into jocular 
talk, in which he delighted and in which he excelled, was a 
rich gift to this wise man. It enabled him to keep his secret; 
to meet every kind of man and every rank in society; to take 
off the edge of the severest decisions; to mask his own pur- 
pose and sound his companion; and to catch with true in- 
stinct the temper of every company he addressed. And, 
more than all, it is to a man of severe labor, in anxious and 
exhausting crises, the natural restorative, good as sleep, and 
is the protection of the overdriven brain against rancor and 
insanity. 

He is the author of a multitude of good sayings, so dis- 
guised as pleasantries that it is certain they had no reputa- 
tion at first but as jests; and only later, by the very accept- 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 69 

ance and adoption they find in the mouths of millions, turn 
out to be the wisdom of the hour. I am sure if this man had 
ruled in a period of less facility of printing, he would have 
become mythological in a very few years, like ^Esop or 
Pilpay, or one of the Seven Wise Masters, by his fables and 
proverbs. But the weight and penetration of many passages 
in his letters, messages and speeches, hidden now by the 
very closeness of their application to the moment, are des- 
tined hereafter to wide fame. What pregnant definitions; 
what unerring common sense; what foresight; and, on great 
occasion, what lofty, and more than national, what humane 
tone ! His brief speech at Gettysburg will not easily be sur- 
passed by words on any recorded occasion. This, and one 
other American speech, that of John Brown to the court that 
tried him, and a part of Kossuth's speech at Birmingham, 
can only be compared with each other, and with no fourth. 
His occupying the chair of State was a triumph of the 
good sense of mankind, and of the public conscience. This 
middle-class country had got a middle-class President, at 
last. Yes, in manners and sympathies, but not in powers, for 
his powders were superior. This man grew according to the 
need. His mind mastered the problem of the day; and, as 
the problem grew, so did his comprehension of it. Rarely 
was man so fitted to the event. In the midst of fears and 
jealousies, in the Babel of counsels and parties, this man 
wrought incessantly with all his might and all his honesty, 
laboring to find what the people wanted, and how to obtain 
that. It cannot be said there is any exaggeration of his 
worth. If ever a man was fairly tested, he was. There was 
no lack of resistance, nor of slander, nor of ridicule. The 
times have allowed no state secrets; the nation has been in 
such ferment, such multitudes had to be trusted, that no 
secret could be kept. Every door was ajar, and we know all 
that befell. 



70 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Then, what an occasion was the whirlwind of the war. 
Here was place for no holiday magistrate, no fair-weather 
sailor; the new pilot was hurried to the helm in a tornado. 
In four years, — four years of battle-days, — his endurance, 
his fertility of resources, his magnanimity, were sorely tried 
and never found wanting. There, by his courage, his justice, 
his even temper, his fertile counsel, his humanity, he stood a 
heroic figure in the centre of a heroic epoch. He is the true 
history of the American people in his time. Step by step he 
walked before them; slow with their slowness, quickening 
his march by theirs, the true representative of this continent; 
an entirely public man; father of his country, the pulse of 
twenty millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their 
minds articulated by his tongue. 

Adam Smith remarks that the axe, which in Houbraken's 
portraits of British kings and worthies is engraved under 
those who have suffered at the block, adds a certain lofty 
charm to the picture. And who does not see, even in this 
tragedy so recent, how fast the terror and ruin of the mas- 
sacre are already burning into glory around the victim? Far 
happier this fate than to have lived to be wished away; to 
have watched the decay of his own faculties; to have seen, 
— perhaps even he, — the proverbial ingratitude of states- 
men; to have seen mean men preferred. Had he not lived 
long enough to keep the greatest promise that ever man 
made to his fellow-men, — the practical abolition of slavery? 
He had seen Tennessee, Missouri and Maryland emancipate 
their slaves. He had seen Savannah, Charleston and Rich- 
mond surrendered; had seen the main army of the rebellion 
lay down its arms. He had conquered the public opinion of 
Canada, England and France. Only Washington can com- 
pare with him in fortune. 

And what if it should turn out, in the unfolding of the 
web, that he had reached the term; that this heroic deliverer 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN 71 

could no longer serve us; that the rebellion had touched its 
natural conclusion, and what remained to be done required 
new and uncommitted hands, — a new spirit born out of the 
ashes of the war; and that Heaven, wishing to show the 
world a completed benefactor, shall make him serve his 
country even more by his death than by his life? Nations, 
like kings, are not good by facility and complaisance. "The 
kindness of kings consists in justice and strength." Easy 
good-nature has been the dangerous foible of the Republic, 
and it was necessary that its enemies should outrage it, and 
drive us to unwonted firmness, to secure the salvation of this 
country in the next ages. 

The ancients believed in a serene and beautiful Genius 
which ruled in the affairs of nations; which, with a slow but 
stern justice, carried forward the fortunes of certain chosen 
houses, weeding out single offenders or offending families, 
and securing at last the firm prosperity of the favorites of 
Heaven. It was too narrow a view of the Eternal Nemesis. 
There is a serene Providence which rules the fate of nations, 
which makes little account of time, little of one generation 
or race, makes no account of disasters, conquers alike by 
what is called defeat or by what is called victory, thrusts 
aside enemy and obstruction, crushes everything immoral as 
inhuman, and obtains the ultimate triumph of the best race 
by the sacrifice of everything which resists the moral laws of 
the world. It makes its own instruments, creates the man 
for the time, trains him in poverty, inspires his genius, and 
arms him for his task. It has given every race its own talent, 
and ordains that only that race which combines perfectly 
with the virtues of all shall endure. 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE WEST TO 
AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 1 

FREDEKICK J. TURNER 

Political thought in the period of the French Revolution 
tended to treat democracy as an absolute system applicable 
to all times and to all peoples, a system that was to be cre- 
ated by the act of the people themselves on philosophical 
principles. Ever since that era there has been an inclination 
on the part of writers on democracy to emphasize the ana- 
lytical and theoretical treatment to the neglect of the un- 
derlying factors of historical development. 

If, however, we consider the underlying conditions and 
forces that create the democratic type of government, and 
at times contradict the external forms to which the name 
democracy is applied, w^e shall find that under this name 
there have appeared a multitude of political types radically 
unlike in fact. The careful student of history must, there- 
fore, seek the explanation of the forms and changes of polit- 
ical institutions in the social and economic forces that de- 
termine them. To know that at any one time a Nation may 
be called a democracy, an aristocracy, or a monarchy, is not 
so important as to know what are the social and economic 
tendencies of the State. These are the vital forces that 
work beneath the surface and dominate the external form. 
It is to changes in the economic and social life of a people 
that we must look for the forces that ultimately create and 
modify organs of political action. For the time, adaptation 

* Atlantic Monthly, January, 1903. Reprinted through the generous 
permission of the author and of the Atlantic Monthly Company. 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 73 

of political structure may be incomplete or concealed. Old 
organs will be utilized to express new forces, and so gradual 
and subtle will be the change that it may hardly be recog- 
nized. The pseudo-democracies under the Medici at Flor- 
ence and under Augustus at Rome are familiar examples of 
this type. Or again, if the political structure be rigid, in- 
capable of responding to the changes demanded by growth, 
the expansive forces of social and economic transformation 
may rend it in some catastrophe like that of the French 
Revolution. In all these changes both conscious ideals and 
unconscious social reorganization are at work. 

These facts are familiar to the student, and yet it is doubt- 
ful if they have been fully considered in connection with 
American democracy. For a century at least, in conven- 
tional expression, Americans have referred to a "glorious 
Constitution" in explaining the stability and prosperity of 
their democracy. We have believed as a Nation that other 
peoples had only to will our democratic institutions in order 
to repeat our own career. 

In dealing with Western contributions to democracy, it is 
essential that the considerations which have just been men- 
tioned shall be kept in mind. Whatever these contributions 
may have been, we find ourselves at the present time in an 
era of such profound economic and social transformation as 
to raise the question of the effect of these changes upon the 
democratic institutions of the United States. Within a 
decade four marked changes have occurred in our National 
development: taken together they constitute a revolution. 

First, there is the exhaustion of the supply of free land and 
the closing of the movement of Western advance as an ef- 
fective factor in American development. The Superintend- 
ent of the Census in 1890 announced the fact that a fron- 
tier line could no longer be traced in the population map of 
the United States, which decade after decade had repre^ 



74 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

sented the advance of settlement. The continent has been 
crossed. The first rough conquest of the wilderness is ac- 
complished, and that great supply of free lands which year 
after year has served to reinforce the democratic influences 
in the United States is exhausted. It is true that vast tracts 
of Government land are still untaken, but they constitute 
the arid region, only a small fraction of them capable of con- 
quest, and then only by the application of capital and com- 
bined effort. The free lands that made the American pioneer 
have gone. 

In the second place, contemporaneously with this there 
has been such a concentration of capital in the control of 
fundamental industries as to make a new epoch in the eco- 
nomic development of the United States. The iron, the coal, 
and the cattle of the country have all fallen under the domina- 
tion of a few great corporations with allied interests, and 
by the rapid combination of the important railroad systems 
and steamship lines, in concert with these same forces, even 
the breadstuffs and the manufactures of the Nation are to 
some degree controlled in a similar way. This is largely the 
work of the last decade. The development of the greatest 
iron mines of Lake Superior occurred in the early nineties, 
and in the same decade came the combination by which the 
coal and the coke of the country, and the transportation 
systems that connect them with the iron mines, have been 
brought under a few concentrated managements. Side by 
side with this concentration of capital has gone the combina- 
tion of labor in the same vast industries. The one is in a 
certain sense the concomitant of the other, but the move- 
ment acquires an additional significance because of the fact 
that during the past fifteen years the labor class has been so 
recruited by a tide of foreign immigration that this class is 
now largely made up of persons of foreign parentage, and 
the lines of cleavage which begin to appear in this country 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 75 

between capital and labor have been accentuated by dis- 
tinctions of nationality. 

A third phenomenon connected with the two just men- 
tioned is the expansion of the United States politically and 
commercially into lands beyond the seas. A cycle of Ameri- 
can development has been completed. Up to the close of the 
War of 1812, this country was involved in the fortunes of the 
European state system. The first quarter of a century of our 
National existence was almost a continual struggle to pre- 
vent ourselves being drawn into the European wars. At the 
close of that era of conflict, the United States set its face 
toward the West. It began the settlement and improve- 
ment of the vast interior of the country. Here was the field 
of our colonization, here the field of our political activity. 
This process being completed, it is not strange that we find 
the United States again involved in world-politics. The 
revolution that occurred four years ago, when the United 
States struck down that ancient nation under whose aus- 
pices the New World was discovered, is hardly yet more than 
dimly understood. The insular wreckage of the Spanish 
War, Porto Rico and the Philippines, with the problems 
presented by the Hawaiian Islands, Cuba, the Isthmian 
Canal, and China, all are indications of the new direction of 
the ship of State, and while we thus turn our attention over- 
seas, our concentrated industrial strength has given us a 
striking power against the commerce of Europe that is al- 
ready producing consternation in the Old World. Having 
completed the conquest of the wilderness, and having con- 
solidated our interests, we are beginning to consider the re- 
lations of democracy and empire. 

And fourth, the political parties of the United States now 
tend to divide on issues that involve the question of Social- 
ism. The rise of the Populist Party in the last decade, and 
the acceptance of so many of its principles by the Demo- 



76 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

cratic Party under the leadership of Mr. Bryan, show in 
striking manner the birth of new poHtical ideas, the reforma- 
tion of the lines of political conflict. 

It is doubtful if in any ten years of American history more 
significant factors in our growth have revealed themselves. 
The struggle of the pioneer farmers to subdue the arid lands 
of the Great Plains in the eighties was followed by the offi- 
cial announcement of the extinction of the frontier line in 
1890. The dramatic outcome of the Chicago Convention 
of 1896 marked the rise into power of the representatives 
of Populistic change. Two years later came the battle of 
Manila, which broke down the old isolation of the Nation, 
and started it on a path the goal of which no man can fore- 
tell; and finally, but two years ago came that concentration 
of which the billion and a half dollar steel trust and the 
union of the Northern continental railways are stupendous 
examples. Is it not obvious, then, that the student who 
seeks for the explanation of democracy in the social and 
economic forces that underlie political forms must make 
inquiry into the conditions that have produced our demo- 
cratic institutions, if he would estimate the effects of these 
vast changes? As a contribution to this inquiry, let us now 
turn to an examination of the part that the West has played 
in shaping our democracy. 

From the beginning of the settlement of America, the 
frontier regions have exercised a steady influence toward 
democracy. In Virginia, to take an example, it can be traced 
as early as the period of Bacon's Rebellion, a hundred years 
before our Declaration of Independence. The small land- 
holders, seeing that their powers were steadily passing into 
the hands of the wealthy planters who controlled Church 
and State and lands, rose in revolt. A generation later, in 
the governorship of Alexander Spotswood, we find a con- 
test between the frontier settlers and the property-holding 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 77 

classes of the coast. The democracy with which Spotswood 
had to struggle, and of which he so bitterly complained, was 
a democracy made up of small landholders, of the newer im- 
migrants, and of indented servants, who at the expiration 
of their time of servitude passed into the interior to take up 
lands and engage in pioneer farming. The "War of the Regu- 
lation " just on the eve of the American Revolution shows 
the steady persistence of this struggle between the classes 
of the interior and those of the coast. The Declaration of 
Grievances which the back counties of the Carolinas then 
drew up against the aristocracy that dominated the politics 
of those colonies exhibits the contest between the democracy 
of the frontier and the established classes who apportioned 
the Legislature in such fashion as to secure effective control 
of government. Indeed, in a period before the outbreak of 
the American Revolution, one can trace a distinct belt 
of democratic territory extending from the back country of 
New England down through western New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, and the South. In each colony this region was in 
conflict with the dominant classes of the coast. It consti- 
tuted a quasi-revolutionary area before the days of the Rev- 
olution, and it formed the basis on which the Democratic 
Party was afterwards established. It was, therefore, in the 
West, as it was in the period before the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, that the struggle for democratic development first 
revealed itself, and in that area the essential ideas of Ameri- 
can democracy had already appeared. Through the period 
of the Revolution and of the Confederation a similar con- 
test can be noted. On the frontier of New England, along 
the western border of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Caro- 
linas, and in the communities beyond the Alleghany Moun- 
tains, there arose a demand of the frontier settlers for inde- 
pendent statehood based on democratic provisions. There is 
a strain of fierceness in their energetic petitions demanding 



78 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

self-government under the theory that every people have the 
right to establish their own political institutions in an area 
which they have won from the wilderness. Those revolu- 
tionary principles based on natural rights, for which the sea- 
board colonies were contending, were taken up with frontier 
energy in an attempt to apply them to the lands of the West. 
No one can read their petitions denouncing the control ex- 
ercised by the wealthy landholders of the coast, appealing 
to the record of their conquest of the wilderness, and de- 
manding the possession of the lands for which they have 
fought the Indians, and which they had reduced by their 
axe to civili'zation, without recognizing in these frontier 
communities the cradle of a belligerent Western democracy. 
"A fool can sometimes put on his coat better than a wise 
man can do it for him," — such is the philosophy of its 
petitions. In this period also came the contests of the in- 
terior agricultural portion of New England against the coast- 
wise merchants and property-holders, of which Shays' 
Rebellion is the best known, although by no means an iso- 
lated instance. By the time of the constitutional convention, 
this struggle for democracy had effected a fairly well-de- 
fined division into parties. Although these parties did not 
at first recognize their interstate connections, there were 
similar issues on which they split in almost all the States. 
The demands for an issue of paper money, the stay of execu- 
tion against debtors, and the relief against excessive taxa- 
tion were found in every colony in the interior agricultural 
regions. The rise of this significant movement awakened the 
apprehensions of the men of means, and in the debates over 
the basis of suffrage for the House of Representatives in the 
Constitutional Convention of 1787 leaders of the conserva- 
tive party did not hesitate to demand that safeguards to 
property should be furnished the coast against the interior. 
The outcome of the debate left the question of suffrage 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 79 

for the House of Representatives dependent upon the policy 
of the separate States. This was in effect imposing a prop- 
erty qualification throughout the Nation as a whole, and it 
was only as the interior of the country developed that these 
restrictions gradually gave way in the direction of manhood 
suffrage. 

All of these scattered democratic tendencies Jefferson 
combined, in the period of Washington's Presidency, into 
the Democratic-Republican Party. Jefferson was the first 
prophet of American democracy, and when we analyze the 
essential features of his gospel, it is clear that the Western 
influence was the dominant element. Jefferson himself was 
born in the frontier region of Virginia, on the edge of the 
Blue Ridge, in the middle of the eighteenth century. His 
father was a pioneer. Jefferson's Notes on Virginia reveal 
clearly his conception that democracy should havei an agri- 
cultural basis, and that manufacturing development and 
city life were dangerous to the purity of the body politic. 
Simplicity and economy in government, the right of revolu- 
tion, the freedom of the individual, the belief that those 
who win the vacant lands are entitled to shape their own 
government in their own way, these are all parts of the plat- 
form of political principles to which he gave his adhesion, 
and they are all elements eminently characteristic of the 
Western democracy into which he was born. In the period 
of the Revolution he had brought in a series of measures 
which tended to throw the power of Virginia into the hands 
of the settlers in the interior rather than of the coastwise 
aristocracy. The repeal of the laws of entail and primo- 
geniture would have destroyed the great estates on which 
the planting aristocracy based its power. The abolition of the 
Established Church would still further have diminished the 
influence of the coastwise party in favor of the dissenting 
sects of the interior. His scheme of general public education 



80 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

reflected the same tendency, and his demand for the aboli- 
tion of slavery was characteristic of a representative of the 
West rather than of the old-time aristocracy of the coast. 
His sympathy with the Western expansion culminated in 
the Louisiana Purchase. In a word, the tendencies of Jeffer- 
son's legislation were to replace the dominance of the plant- 
ing aristocracy by the dominance of the interior class, which 
had sought in vain to achieve its liberties in the period of 
Bacon's Rebellion. 

Nevertheless, Thomas Jefferson was the John the Baptist 
of democracy, not its Moses. Only with the slow setting of 
the tide of settlement farther and farther toward the in- 
terior did the democratic influence grow strong enough to 
take actual possession of the Government. The period from 
1800 to 1820 saw a steady increase in these tendencies. The 
established classes in New England and the South began to 
take alarm. Perhaps no better illustration of the apprehen- 
sions of the old-time Federal conservative can be given than 
these utterances of President Dwight, of Yale College, in the 
book of travels which he published in that period : — 

The class of pioneers cannot live in regular society. They are 
too idle, too talkative, too passionate, too prodigal, and too shift- 
less to acquire either property or character. They are impatient 
of the restraints of law, religion, and morality, and grumble about 
the taxes by which the Rulers, Ministers, and Schoolmasters are 
supported. . . . After exposing the injustice of the community in 
neglecting to invest persons of such superior merit in public offices, 
in many an eloquent harangue uttered by many a kitchen fire, in 
every blacksmith shop, in every corner of the streets, and finding 
all their efforts vain, they become at length discouraged, and under 
the pressure of poverty, the fear of the gaol, and consciousness of 
public contempt, leave their native places and betake themselves 
to the wilderness. 

Such was a conservative's impression of that pioneer 
movement of New England colonists who had spread up the 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 81 

valley of the Connecticut into New Hampshire, Vermont, 
and western New York in the period of which he wrote, and 
who afterwards went on to possess the Northwest. New 
England Federalism looked with a shudder at the democratic 
ideas of those who refused to recognize the established order. 
But in that period there came into the Union a sisterhood of 
frontier States — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri — with 
provisions for the franchise that brought in complete de- 
mocracy. Even the newly created States of the Southwest 
showed the same tendency. The wind of democracy blew so 
strongly from the West, that even in the older States of 
New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, con- 
ventions were called, which liberalized their constitutions by 
strengthening the democratic basis of the State. In the same 
time the labor population of the cities began to assert its 
power and its determination to share in government. Of 
this frontier democracy which now took possession of the 
Nation, Andrew Jackson was the very personification. He 
was born in the backwoods of the Carolinas in the midst of 
the turbulent democracy that preceded the Revolution, and 
he grew up in the frontier State of Tennessee. In the midst 
of this region of personal feuds and frontier ideals of law, he 
quickly rose to leadership. The appearance of this frontiers- 
man on the floor of Congress was an omen full of significance. 
He reached Philadelphia at the close of Washington's Ad- 
ministration, having ridden on horseback nearly eight hun- 
dred miles to his destination. Gallatin, himself a Western 
man, describes Jackson as he entered the halls of Congress : 
** A tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of 
hair hanging over his face and a cue down his back tied in 
an eel-skin; his dress singular; his manners those of a rough 
backwoodsman." And Jefferson testified: "When I was 
President of the Senate he was a Senator, and he could never 
speak on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen 



82 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

him attempt it repeatedly and as often choke with rage." 
At last the frontier in the person of its typical man had found 
a place in the Government. This six-foot backwoodsman, 
with blue eyes that could blaze on occasion, this choleric, 
impetuous, self-willed Scotch-Irish leader of men, this ex- 
pert duelist, and ready fighter, this embodiment of the tena- 
cious, vehement, personal West, was in politics to stay. The 
frontier democracy of that time had the instincts of the 
clansman in the days of Scotch border warfare. Vehement 
and tenacious as the democracy was, strenuously as each 
man contended with his neighbor for the spoils of the new 
country that opened before them, they all had respect for 
the man who best expressed their aspirations and their ideas. 
Every community had its hero. In the War of 1812 and the 
subsequent Indian fighting Jackson made good his claim, not 
only to the loyalty of the people of Tennessee, but of the 
whole West, and even of the Nation. He had the essential 
traits of the Kentucky and Tennessee frontier. It was a 
frontier free from the influence of European ideas and in- 
stitutions. The men of the "Western World" turned their 
backs upon the Atlantic Ocean, and with a grim energy 
and self-reliance began to build up a society free from the 
dominance of ancient forms. 

The Westerner defended himself and resented govern- 
mental restrictions. The duel and the blood-feud found con- 
genial soil in Kentucky and Tennessee. The idea of the 
personality of law was often dominant over the organized 
machinery of justice. That method was best which was 
most direct and effective. The backwoodsman was intoler- 
ant of men who split hairs, or scrupled over the method of 
reaching the right. In a word, the unchecked development 
of the individual was the significant product of this frontier 
democracy. It sought rather to express itself by choosing 
a man of the people, than by the formation of elaborate 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 83 

governmental institutions. It was because Andrew Jackson 
personified these essential Western traits that in his Presi- 
dency he became the idol and the mouthpiece of the popular 
will. In his assaults upon the Bank as an engine of aris- 
tocracy, and in his denunciation of Nullification, he went 
directly to his object with the ruthless energy of a frontiers- 
man. For formal law and the subleties of State sovereignty 
he had the contempt of a backwoodsman. Nor is it without 
significance that this typical man of the new democracy 
will always be associated with the triumph of the spoils 
system in National politics. To the new democracy of the 
West, office was an opportunity to exercise natural rights as 
an equal citizen of the community. Rotation in office served 
not simply to allow the successful man to punish his enemies 
and reward his friends, but it also furnished the training in 
the actual conduct of political affairs which every American 
claimed as his birthright. Only in a primitive democracy of 
the type of the United States in 1830 could such a system 
have existed without the ruin of the State. National gov- 
ernment in that period was no complex and nicely adjusted 
machine, and the evils of the system were long in making 
themselves fully apparent. 

The triumph of Andrew Jackson marked the end of an old 
era of trained statesmen for the Presidency. With him began 
the era of the popular hero. Even Martin Van Buren, whom 
we think of in connection with the East, was born in a log 
house under conditions that were not unlike parts of the 
older West. Harrison was the hero of the Northwest, as 
Jackson had been of the Southwest. Polk was a typical 
Tennesseean, eager to expand the Nation, and Zachary 
Taylor was what Webster called a "frontier colonel." Dur- 
ing the period that followed Jackson, power passed from the 
region of Kentucky and Tennessee to the border of the Mis- 
sissippi. The natural democratic tendencies that had earlier 



84 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

shown themselves in the Gulf States were destroyed, how- 
ever, by the spread of cotton culture, and the development 
of great plantations in that region. What had been typical 
of the democracy of the Revolutionary frontier and of the 
frontier of Andrew Jackson was now to be seen in the States 
between the Ohio and the Mississippi. As Andrew Jackson is 
the typical democrat of the former region, so Abraham Lin- 
coln is the very embodiment of the pioneer period of the old 
Northwest. Indeed, he is the embodiment of the democracy 
of the West. How can one speak of him except in the words 
of Lowell's great "Commemoration Ode": — 

"For him her Old- World moulds aside she threw. 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 

Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 



His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind. 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 
Nothing of Europe here. 

New birth of our new soil, the first American." 

The pioneer life from which Lincoln came differed in im- 
portant respects from the frontier democracy typified by 
Andrew Jackson. Jackson's democracy was contentious, 
individualistic, and it sought the ideal of local self-govern- 
ment and expansion. Lincoln represents rather the pioneer 
folk who entered the forest of the great Northwest to chop 
out a home, to build up their fortunes in the midst of a con- 
tinually ascending industrial movement. In the democracy 
of the Southwest, industrial development and city life were 
only minor factors, but to the democracy of the Northwest 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 85 

they were its very life. To widen the area of this clearing, 
to contend with one another for the mastery of the industrial 
resources of the rich provinces, to struggle for a place in the 
ascending movement of society, to transmit to one's offspring 
the chance for education, for industrial betterment, for the rise 
in life which the hardships of the pioneer existence denied to 
the pioneer himself, these were some of the ideals of the re- 
gion to which Lincoln came. The men were commonwealth 
builders, industry builders. Whereas the type of hero in the 
Southwest was militant, in the Northwest he was industrial. 
It was in the midst of these "plain people," as he loved to 
call them, that Lincoln grew to manhood. As Emerson says : 
"He is the true history of the American people in his time.'* 
The years of his early life were the years when the democracy 
of the Northwest came into struggle with the institution of 
slavery that threatened to forbid the expansion of the dem- 
ocratic pioneer life in the West. In President Eliot's essay 
on Five American Contributions to Civilization, he instances 
as one of the supreme tests of American democracy its at- 
titude upon the question of slavery. But if democracy chose 
wisely and worked effectively toward the solution of this 
problem, it must be remembered that Western democracy 
took the lead. The rail-splitter himself became the Nation's 
President in that fierce time of struggle, and the armies of 
the woodsmen and pioneer farmers recruited in the old 
Northwest, under the leadership of Sherman and Grant, 
made free the Father of the Waters, marched through Geor- 
gia, and helped to force the struggle to a conclusion at Ap- 
pomattox. The free pioneer democracy struck down slave- 
holding aristocracy on its march to the West. 

The last chapter in the development of Western democ- 
racy is the one that deals with its conquest over the vast 
spaces of the new West. At each new stage of Western de- 
velopment, the people have had to grapple with larger areas. 



86 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

with vaster combinations. The little colony of Massachusetts 
veterans that settled at Marietta received a land grant as 
large as the State of Rhode Island. The band of Connecti- 
cut pioneers that followed Moses Cleaveland to the Con- 
necticut Reserve occupied a region as large as the parent 
State. The area which settlers of New England stock oc- 
cupied on the prairies of northern Illinois surpassed the 
combined area of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode 
Island. Men who had become accustomed to the narrow 
valleys and the little towns of the East found themselves out 
on the boundless spaces of the West dealing with units of such 
magnitude as dwarfed their former experience. The Great 
Lakes, the prairies, the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, 
the Mississippi and the Missouri, furnished new standards 
of measurement for the achievement of this industrial de- 
mocracy. Individualism began to give way to cooperation 
and to governmental activity. Even in the earlier days of 
the democratic conquest of the wilderness, demands had 
been made upon the Government for support in internal im- 
provements, but this new West showed a growing tendency 
to call to its assistance the powerful arm of National author- 
ity. In the period since the Civil War, the vast public do- 
main has been donated to the individual farmer, to States 
for education, to railroads for the construction of transpor- 
tation lines. Moreover, with the advent of democracy in the 
last fifteen years upon the Great Plains, new physical con- 
ditions have presented themselves which have accelerated 
the social tendency of Western democracy. The pioneer 
farmer of the days of Lincoln could place his family on the 
flatboat, strike into the wilderness, cut out his clearing, and 
with little or no capital go on to the achievement of indus- 
trial independence. Even the homesteader on the Western 
prairies found it impossible to work out a similar independ- 
ent destiny, although the factor of transportation made a 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 87 

serious and increasing impediment to the free working-out 
of his individual career. But when the arid lands and the 
mineral resources of the Far West were reached, no con- 
quest was possible by the old individual pioneer methods. 
Here expensive irrigation works must be constructed, co- 
operative activity was demanded in utilization of the water- 
supply, capital beyond the reach of the small farmer was 
required. In a word, the physiographic province itself de- 
creed that the destiny of this new frontier should be social 
rather than individual. 

Magnitude of social achievement is the watchword of the 
democracy since the Civil War. From petty towns built in the 
marshes, cities arose whose greatness and industrial power 
are the wonder of our time. The conditions were ideal for 
the production of captains of industry. The old democratic 
admiration for the self-made man, its old deference to the 
rights of competitive individual development, together with 
the stupendous natural resources that opened to the conquest 
of the keenest and the strongest, gave such conditions of 
mobility as enabled the development of the vast industries 
which in our own decade have marked the West. 

Thus, in brief, have been Outlined the large phases of the 
development of Western democracy in the different areas 
which it has conquered. There has been a steady develop- 
ment of the industrial ideal, and a steady increase of the 
social tendency, in this later movement of Western democ- 
racy. While the individualism of the frontier, so prominent 
in the earliest days of the Western advance, has been pre- 
served as an ideal, more and more these individuals strug- 
gling each with the other, dealing with vaster and vaster 
areas, with larger and larger problems, have found it neces- 
sary to combine under the leadership of the strongest. This 
is the explanation of the rise of those preeminent captains of 
industry whose genius has concentrated capital to control 



j*8 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

the fundamental resources of the Nation. If now in the 
way of recapitulation, we try to pick out from the influences 
that have gone to the making of Western democracy the 
factors which constitute the net result of this movement, 
we shall have to mention at least the following: — 

Most important of all has been the fact that an area of 
free land has continually lain on the western border of the 
settled area of the United States. Whenever social condi- 
tions tended to crystallize in the East, whenever capital 
tended to press upon labor or political restraints to impede 
the freedom of the mass, there was this gate of escape to the 
free conditions of the frontier. These free lands promoted 
individualism, economic equality, freedom to rise, democ- 
racy. Men would not accept inferior wages and a perma- 
nent position of social subordination when this promised 
land of freedom and equality was theirs for the taking. Who 
would rest content under oppressive legislative conditions 
when with a slight effort he might reach a land wherein to 
become a co-worker in the building of free cities and free 
States on the lines of his own ideal .^ In a word, then, free 
lands meant free opportunities. Their existence has differ- 
entiated the American democracy from the democracies 
which have preceded it, because ever, as democracy in the 
East took the form of a highly specialized and complicated 
industrial society, in the West it kept in touch with primi- 
tive conditions, and by action and reaction these two forces 
have shaped our history. 

In the next place, these free lands and this treasury of in- 
dustrial resources have existed over such vast spaces that 
they have demanded of democracy increasing spaciousness 
of design and power of execution. Western democracy is 
contrasted with the democracy of all other times in the large- 
ness of the tasks to which it has set its hand, and in the vast 
achievements which it has wrought out in the control of 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 89 

nature and of politics. Upon the region of the Middle West 
alone could be set down all of the great countries of central 
Europe, — France, Germany, Italy, and Austro-Hungary, 
— and there would still be a liberal margin. It would be 
difficult to over-emphasize the importance of this training 
upon democracy. Never before in the history of the world 
has a democracy existed on so vast an area and handled 
things in the gross with such success, with such largeness of 
design, and such grasp upon the means of execution. In 
short, democracy has learned in the West of the United 
States how to deal with the problem of magnitude. The old 
historic democracies were but little States with primitive 
economic conditions. 

But the very task of dealing with vast resources, over vast 
areas, under the conditions of free competition furnished by 
the West, has produced the rise of those captains of industry 
whose success in consolidating economic power now raises 
the question as to whether democracy under such condi- 
tions can survive. For the old military type of Western 
leaders like George Rogers Clark, Andrew Jackson, and 
William Henry Harrison have been substituted such in- 
dustrial leaders as James Hill, John D. Rockefeller, and 
Andrew Carnegie. 

The question is imperative, then. What ideals persist from 
this democratic experience of the West; and have they ac- 
quired sufficient momentum to sustain themselves under 
conditions so radically urJike those in the days of their ori- 
gin? In other words, the question put at the beginning of 
this discussion becomes pertinent. Under the forms of the 
American democracy is there in reality evolving such a con- 
centration of economic and social power in the hands of a 
comparatively few men as may make political democracy 
an appearance rather than a reality? The free lands are 
gone. The material forces that gave vitality to Western 



90 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

democracy are passing away. It is to the realm of the spirit, 
to the domain of ideals and legislation, that we must look for 
Western influence upon democracy in our own days. 

Western democracy has been from the time of its birth 
idealistic. The very fact of the wilderness appealed to men 
as a fair, blank page on which to write a new chapter in the 
story of man's struggle for a higher type of society. The 
Western wilds, from the Alleghanies to the Pacific, consti- 
tuted the richest free gift that was ever spread out before 
civilized man. To the peasant and artisan of the Old World, 
bound by the chains of social class, as old as custom and as 
inevitable as fate, the West offered an exit into a free life 
and greater well-being among the bounties of nature, into 
the midst of resources that demanded manly exertion, and 
that gave in return the chance for indefinite ascent in the 
scale of social advance. "To each she offered gifts after his 
will." Never again can such an opportunity come to the 
sons of men. It was unique, and the thing is so near us, so 
much a part of our lives, that we do not even yet comprehend 
its vast significance. The existence of this land of opportu- 
nity has made America the goal of idealists from the days 
of the Pilgrim Fathers. With all the materialism of the 
pioneer movements, this idealistic conception of the vacant 
lands as an opportunity for a new order of things is unmis- 
takably present. KipHng's "Song of the English" has given 
it expression : — 

"We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man-stifled town; 

We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange roads go down. 

Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power with the Need, 

Till the Soul that is not man's soul was lent us to lead. 

As the deer breaks — as the steer breaks — from the herd where they 

graze. 
In the faith of little children we went on our ways. 

Then the wood failed — then the food failed — then the last water dried -^ 
In the faith of little children we lay down and died. 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO^ DEMOCRACY 91 

" On the sand-drift — on the veldt-side — in the fern-scrub we lay, 
That our sons might follow after by the bones on the way. 
Follow after — follow after! We have watered the root 
And the bud has come to blossom that ripens for fruit! 
Follow after — ■ we are waiting by the trails that we lost 
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a host. 

"Follow after — follow after — for the harvest is sown: 

By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your own!" 

This was the vision that called to Roger Williams, — that 
"prophetic soul ravished of truth disembodied," "unable 
to enter into treaty with its environment," and forced to 
seek the wilderness. "Oh, how sweet," wrote William Penn, 
from his forest refuge, "is the quiet of these parts, freed 
from the troubles and perplexities of woeful Europe." And 
here he projected what he called his "Holy Experiment in 
Government." 

If the later West offers few such striking illustrations of 
the relation of the wilderness to idealistic schemes, and if 
some of the designs were fantastic and abortive, none the 
less the influence is a fact. Hardly a Western State but has 
been the Mecca of some sect or band of social reformers, 
anxious to put into practice their ideals, in vacant land, far 
removed from the checks of a settled form of social organi- 
zation. Consider the Dunkards, the Icarians, the Fourier- 
ists, the Mormons, and similar idealists who sought our 
Western wilds. But the idealistic influence is not limited to 
the dreamers* conception of a new State. It gave to the 
pioneer farmer and city builder a restless energy, a quick 
capacity for judgment and action, a belief in liberty, free- 
dom of opportunity, and a resistance to the domination of 
class which infused a vitality and power into the individ- 
ual atoms of this democratic mass. Even as he dwelt among 
the stumps of his newly cut clearing, the pioneer had the 
creative vision of a new order of society. In imagination he 



92 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

pushed back the forest boundary to the confines of a mighty 
Commonwealth; he willed that log cabins should become 
the lofty buildings of great cities. He decreed that his chil- 
dren should enter into a heritage of education, comfort, and 
social welfare, and for this ideal he bore the scars of the wil- 
derness. Possessed with this idea he ennobled his task and 
laid deep foundations for a democratic State. Nor was this 
idealism by any means limited to the American pioneer. 

To the old native democratic stock has been added a vast 
army of recruits from the Old World. There are in the 
Middle West alone four million persons of German parent- 
age out of a total of seven millions in the country. Over a 
million persons of Scandinavian parentage live in the same 
region. This immigration culminated in the early eighties, 
and although there have been fluctuations since, it long con- 
tinued a most extraordinary phenomenon. The democracy 
of the newer W^est is deeply affected by the ideals brought 
by these immigrants from the Old World. To them America 
was not simply a new home ; it was a land of opportunity, of 
freedom, of democracy. It meant to them, as to the Amer- 
ican pioneer that preceded them, the opportunity to de- 
stroy the bonds of social caste that bound them in their older 
home, to hew out for themselves in a new country a destiny 
proportioned to the powers that God had given them, a 
chance to place their families under better conditions and to 
win a larger life than the life that they had left behind. He 
w ho believes that even the hordes of recent immigrants from 
southern Italy are drawn to these shores by nothing more 
than a dull and blind materialism has not penetrated into 
the heart of the problem. The idealism and expectation of 
these children of the Old World, the hopes which they have 
formed for a newer and freer life across the seas, are almost 
pathetic when one considers how far they are from the pos- 
sibility of fruition. He who would take stock of American 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 93 

democracy must not forget the accumulation of human 
purposes and ideals which immigration has added to the 
American populace. 

In this connection it must also be remembered that these 
democratic ideals have existed at each stage of the advance 
of the frontier, and have left behind them deep and endur- 
ing effects on the thinking of the whole country. Long after 
the frontier period of a particular region of the United States 
has passed away, the conception of society, the ideals and 
aspirations which it produced, persist in the minds of the 
people. So recent has been the transition of the greater por- 
tion of the United States from frontier conditions to condi- 
tions of settled life, that we are, over the larger portion of 
the United States, hardly a generation removed from the 
primitive conditions of the West. If, indeed, we ourselves 
were not pioneers, our fathers were, and the inherited ways 
of looking at things, the fundamental assumptions of the 
American people, have all been shaped by this experience 
of democracy on its westward march. This experience has 
been wrought into the very warp and woof of American 
thought. Even those masters of industry and capital who 
have risen to power by the conquest of Western resources 
came from the midst of this society and still profess its prin- 
ciples. John D. Rockefeller was born on a New York farm, 
and began his career as a young business man in St. Louis. 
Marcus Hanna was a Cleveland grocer's clerk at the age of 
twenty. Claus Spreckles, the sugar king, came from Ger- 
many as a steerage passenger to the United States in 1848. 
Marshal Field was a farmer boy in Conway, Massachusetts, 
until he left to grow up with the young Chicago. Andrew 
Carnegie came as a ten-year-old boy from Scotland to Pitts- 
burgh, then a distinctively Western town. He built up his 
fortunes through successive grades until he became the 
dominating factor in the great iron industries, and paved 



94 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

the way for that colossal achievement, the Steel Trust. 
Whatever may be the tendencies of this corporation, there 
can be little doubt of the democratic ideals of Mr. Carnegie 
himself. With lavish hand he has strewn millions through 
the United States for the promotion of libraries. The effect 
of this library movement in perpetuating the democracy 
that comes from an intelligent and self-respecting people 
can hardly be measured. In his Triumphant Democracyy 
published in 1886, Mr. Carnegie, the ironmaster, said, in 
reference to the mineral wealth of the United States: 
"Thank God, these treasures are in the hands of an intelli- 
gent people, the Democracy, to be used for the general good 
of the masses, and not made the spoils of monarchs, courts, 
and aristocracy, to be turned to the base and selfish ends of 
a privileged hereditary class." It would be hard to find a 
more rigorous assertion of democratic doctrine than the 
celebrated utterance, attributed to the same man, that he 
should feel it a disgrace to die rich. 

In enumerating the services of American democracy, 
President Eliot includes the corporation as one of its achieve- 
ments, declaring that "freedom of incorporation, though no 
longer exclusively a democratic agency, has given a strong 
support to democratic institutions." In one sense this is 
doubtless true, since the corporation has been one of the 
means by which small properties can be aggregated into an 
effective working body. Socialistic writers have long been 
fond of pointing out also that these various concentrations 
pave the way for and make possible social control. From 
this point of view it is possible that the masters of industry 
may prove to be not so much an incipient aristocracy as the 
pathfinders for democracy in reducing the industrial world 
to systematic consolidation suited to democratic control. 
The great geniuses that have built up the modern indus- 
trial concentration were trained in the midst of democratic 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 95 

society. They were the product of these democratic condi- 
tions. Freedom to rise was the very condition of their ex- 
istence. Whether they will be followed by successors who will 
adopt the exploitation of the masses, and who will be capa- 
able of retaining under efficient control these vast resources, 
is one of the questions which we shall have to face. 

This, at least, is clear: American democracy is funda- 
mentally the outcome of the experiences of the American 
people in dealing with the West. Western democracy 
through the whole of its earlier period tended to the pro- 
duction of a society of which the most distinctive fact was 
the freedom of the individual to rise under conditions of 
social mobility, and whose ambition was the liberty and well- 
being of the masses. This conception has vitalized all Amer- 
ican democracy, and has brought it into sharp contrasts with 
the democracies of history, and with those modern efforts 
of Europe to create an artificial democratic order by legisla- 
tion. The problem of the United States is not to create de- 
mocracy, but to conserve democratic institutions and ideals. 
In the later period of its development. Western democracy 
has been gaining experience in the problem of social control. 
It has steadily enlarged the sphere of its action and the in- 
struments for its perpetuation. By its system of public 
schools, from the grades to the graduate work of the great 
universities, the West has created a larger single body of in- 
telligent plain people than can be found elsewhere in the 
world. Its educational forces are more democratic than those 
of the East, and counting the common schools and colleges 
together, the Middle West alone has twice as many students 
as New England and the Middle States combined. Its po- 
litical tendencies, whether we consider Democracy, Popu- 
lism, or Republicanism, are distinctly in the direction of 
greater social control and the conservation of the old demo- 
cratic ideals. To these ideals the West as a whole adheres 



96 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

with even a passionate determination. If, in working out its 
mastery of the resources of the interior, it has produced a 
type of industrial leader so powerful as to be the wonder of 
the world, nevertheless, it is still to be determined whether 
these men constitute a menace to democratic institutions, or 
the most efficient factor for adjusting democratic control to 
the new conditions. 

Whatever shall be the outcome of the rush of this huge in- 
dustrial modern United States to its place among the nations 
of the earth, the formation of its Western democracy will 
always remain one of the wonderful chapters in the history 
of the human race. Into this vast shaggy continent of ours 
poured the first feeble tide of European settlement. Euro- 
pean men, institutions, and ideas were lodged in the Ameri- 
can wilderness, and this great American West took them to 
her bosom, taught them a new way of looking upon the 
destiny of the common man, trained them in adaptation to 
the conditions of the New World, to the creation of new in- 
stitutions to meet new needs, and ever as society on her 
eastern border grew to resemble the Old World in its social 
forms and its industry, ever, as it began to lose faith in the 
ideals of democracy, she opened new provinces, and dowered 
new democracies in her most distant domains with her ma- 
terial treasures and with the ennobling influence that the 
fierce love of freedom, the strength that came from hewing 
out a home, making a school and a church, and creating a 
higher future for his family, furnished to the pioneer. She 
gave to the world such types as the farmer Thomas Jefferson, 
with his Declaration of Independence, his statute for reli- 
gious toleration, and his purchase of Louisiana. She gave us 
Andrew Jackson, that fierce Tennessee spirit who broke 
down the traditions of conservative rule, swept away the 
privacies and privileges of officialdom, and, like a Gothic 
leader, opened the temple of the Nation to the populace. 



CONTRIBUTIONS OF WEST TO DEMOCRACY 97 

She gave us Abraham Lincoln, whose gaunt frontier form 
and gnarled, massive hand told of the conflict with the 
forest, whose grasp of the axe-handle of the pioneer was no 
firmer than his grasp of the helm of the ship of State as it 
breasted the seas of civil war. She gave us the tragedy of the 
pioneer farmer as he marched daringly on to the conquest of 
the arid lands, and met his first defeat by forces too strong 
to be dealt with under the old conditions. She has fur- 
nished to this new democracy her stores of mineral wealth, 
that dwarf those of the Old World, and her provinces that 
in themselves are vaster and more productive than most of 
the nations of Europe. Out of her bounty has come a Na- 
tion whose industrial competition alarms the Old World, and 
the masters of whose resources wield wealth and power 
vaster than the wealth and power of kings. Best of all, the 
West gave, not only to the American, but to the unhappy 
and oppressed of all lands, a vision of hope, and assurance 
that the world held a place where were to be found high 
faith in man and the will and power to furnish him the op- 
portunity to grow to the full measure of his own capacity. 
Great and powerful as are the new sons of her loins, the 
Republic is greater than they. The paths of the pioneer 
have widened into broad highways. The forest clearing has 
expanded into affluent Commonwealths. Let us see to it 
that the ideals of the pioneer in his log cabin shall enlarge 
into the spiritual life of a democracy where civic power 
shall dominate and utilize individual achievement for the 
common good, j 



THE PRESENT CRISIS^ 
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth's 

aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on from east to 

west, 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the soul within him 

climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the energy sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the thorny stem of 

Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots the instantane- 
ous throe. 
When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's systems to and 

fro; 
At the birth of each new Era, with a recognizing start. 
Nation wildly looks at nation, standing with mute lips apart. 
And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child leaps beneath the 
Future's heart. 

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror and a chill. 
Under continent to continent, the sense of coming ill. 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his sympathies with 

God 
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be drunk up by the 

sod. 
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving in the nobler 

dod. 

* Written in December, 1844. 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 99 

For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along. 
Round the earth's electric circle, the swift flash of right or 

wrong; 
Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity's vast 

frame 
Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy or 

shame; — 
In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal claim. 

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide. 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil 

side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each the 

bloom or blight. 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the 

right. 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that 

light. 

Hast thou chosen, O my people, on whose party thou shalt 

stand. 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes the dust against 

our land? 
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 't is Truth alone is 

strong. 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see around her throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield her from all 

wrong. 

Backward look across the ages and the beacon-moments 

see. 
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut through 

Oblivion's sea; 
Not an ear in court or market for the low foreboding cry ' 



100 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, from whose feet 

earth's chaff must fly; 
Never shows the choice momentous till the judgment hath 

passed by. 

Careless seems the great Avenger; history's pages but re- 
cord 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old systems and 
the Word; 

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the 
throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim un- 
known, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his 
own. 

We see dimly in the Present what is small and what is 
great. 

Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn the iron helm of 
fate. 

But the soul is still oracular; amid the market's din. 

List the ominous stern whisper from the Delphic cave 
within, — 

"They enslave their children's children who make compro- 
mise with sin." 

Slavery, the earth-born Cyclops, fellest of the giant brood, 
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who have drenched 

the earth with blood. 
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by our purer 

day, 
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his miserable prey; — - 
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our helpless children 

play? 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 101 

Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched 

crust, 
Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to 

be just; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands 

aside. 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified. 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied. 

Count me o'er earth's chosen heroes, — they were souls that 
stood alone. 

While the men they agonized for hurled the contumelious 
stone. 

Stood serene, and down the future saw the golden beam in- 
cline 

To the side of perfect justice, mastered by their faith 
divine, 

By one man's plain truth to manhood and to God's supreme 
design. 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's bleeding feet I 

track, 
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the cross that turns not 

back. 
And these mounts of anguish number how each generation 

learned 
One new word of that grand Credo which in prophet-hearts 

hath burned 
Since the first man stood God-conquered with his face to 

heaven upturned. 

For Humanity sweeps onward: where to-day the martyr 

stands. 
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; 



102 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots 

burn. 
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden urn. 

*T is as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle slaves 

Of a legendary virtue carved upon our fathers' graves, 

Worshippers of light ancestral make the present light a 

crime; — 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, steered by men 

behind their time? 
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, that make Ply- 
mouth Rock sublime? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old iconoclasts. 
Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all virtue was the 

Past's; 
But we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath 

made us free. 
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits 

flee 
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them 

across the sea. 

They have rights who dare maintain them; we are traitors 
to our sires. 

Smothering in their holy ashes Freedom's new-lit altar- 
fires; 

Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall we, in our haste 
to slay. 

From the tombs of the old prophets steal the funeral lamps 
away 

To light up the martyr-fagots round the prophets of to- 
day? 



THE PRESENT CRISIS 103 

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good 
uncouth; 

They must upward still, and onward, who would keep 
abreast of Truth; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we ourselves must Pil- 
grims be. 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desper- 
ate winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood- 
rusted key. 



RISE, O DAYS, FROM YOUR FATHOMLESS 
DEEPS ' 

WALT WHITMAN 



Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, 
fiercer sweep! 

Long for my soul, hungering gymnastic, I devoured what 
the earth gave me; 

Long I roam'd the woods of the north — long I watch'd 
Niagara pouring; 

I traveFd the prairies over, and slept on their breast — I 
cross'd the Nevadas, I cross'd the plateaus; 

I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I saiFd out 
to sea; 

I sail'd through the storm, I was refreshed by the storm; 

I watch*d with joy the threatening maws of the waves; 

I mark'd the white combs where they career 'd so high, curl- 
ing over; 

I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds; 

Saw from below what arose and mounted (O superb! O 
wild as my heart, and powerful!), 

Heard the continuous thunder, as it bellow'd after the light- 
ning; 

Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning, as sudden 
and fast amid the din they chased each other across 
the sky; 

* Included in " Drum-Taps," Leaves of Grass. Reprmted through the 
generous permission of Mr. Horace Traubel. 



RISE, O DAYS 105 

— These, and such as these, I, elate, saw — saw with won- 
der, yet pensive and masterful; 
All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me; 
Yet there with my soul I fed — I fed content, supercilious. 



2 

'T was well, O soul ! 't was a good preparation you gave me ! 
Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill; 
Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never 

gave us; 
Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the 

mightier cities; 
Something for us is pouring now, more than Niagara pouring; 
Torrents of men (sources and rills of the Northwest, are 

you indeed inexhaustible?). 
What, to pavements and homesteads here — what were 

those storms of the mountains and sea? 
What, to passions I witness around me to-day? Was the 

sea risen? 
Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black 

clouds? 
Lo ! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly 

and savage; 
Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing front — 

Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain'd; 
— What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what 

comes here! 
How it climbs with daring feet and hands ! how it dashes ! 
How the true thunder bellows after the lightning! how 

bright the flashes of lightning! 
How DEMOCRACY, with desperate vengeful part strides 

on, shown through the dark by those flashes of light- 
ning! 



106 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

(Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied I heard through 

the dark, 
In a lull of the deafening confusion.) 



3 

Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful 

stroke ! 
And do you rise higher than ever yet, O days, O cities! 
Crash heavier, heavier yet, O storms ! you have done me good ; 
My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs your immortal 

strong nutriment; 

— Long had I walk'd my cities, my country roads, through 

farms, only half -satisfied; 

One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a snake, crawFd on 
the ground before me. 

Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, iron- 
ically hissing low; 

— The cities I loved so well, I abandoned and left — I sped 

to the certainties suitable to me; 
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies, and 

Nature's dauntlessness. 
I refreshed myself with it only, I could relish it only; 
I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire — on the water 

and air I waited long; 

— But now I no longer wait — I am fully satisfied — I am 

glutted; 
I have witnessed the true lightning — I have witnessed my 

cities electric; 
I have lived to behold man burst forth, and warlike America 

rise; 
Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary 

wilds. 
No more the mountains roam, or sail the stormy sea. 



THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD i 
WALT WHITMAN 



Thou Mother with thy equal brood, 

Thou varied chain of different States, yet one identity only, 

A special song before I go I 'd sing o'er all the rest. 

For thee, the future. 

I 'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nationality, 
I 'd fashion thy ensemble including body and soul, 
I'd show away ahead thy real Union, and how it may be 
accomplish'd. 

The paths to the house I seek to make. 
But leave to those to come the house itself. 

Belief I sing and preparation; 

As Life and Nature are not great with reference to the pres- 
ent only. 
But greater still from what is yet to come. 
Out of that formula for thee I sing. 



As a strong bird on pinions free. 
Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward cleaving. 
Such be the thought I 'd think of thee America, 
Such be the recitative I 'd bring for thee. 

* Reprinted from Leaves of Grass through the generous permission of 
Mr. Horace Traubel. 



108 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I'd bring thee 

not, 
Nor the compliments that have served their turn so long, 
Nor rhyme, nor the classics, nor perfume of foreign court or 

indoor library; 
But an odor I'd bring as from forests of pine in Maine, or 

breath of an Illinois prairie. 
With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or Tennessee, or from 

Texas uplands, or Florida's glades. 
Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide blue spread of 

Huron, 
With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, or Yosemite, 
And murmuring under, pervading all, I 'd bring the rustling 

sea-sound. 
That endlessly sounds from the two Great Seas of the world. 

And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains dread Mother, 
Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, mind-formulas 

fitted for thee, real and sane and large as these and 

thee. 
Thou ! mounting higher, diving deeper than we knew, thou 

transcendental Union ! 
By thee fact to be justified, blended with thought. 
Thought of man justified, blended with God, 
Through they idea, lo, the immortal reality ! 
Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea ! 

S 

Brain of the New World, what a task is thine, 

To formulate the Modern — out of the peerless grandeur of 

the modern. 
Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast poems, churches, 

art. 



THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD 109 

(Recast, may-be discard them, end them — may-be their 

work is done, who knows?) 
By vision, hand, conception, on the background of the 

mighty past, the dead, 
To Hmn with absolute faith the mighty living present. 

And yet thou living present brain, heir of the dead, the Old 

World brain. 
Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe within its folds so 

long, 
Thou carefully prepared by it so long — haply thou but un- 

foldest it, only maturest it, 
It to eventuate in thee — the essence of the by-gone time 

contain'd in thee. 
Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to themselves, destined 

with reference to thee; 
Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-growing, 
The fruit of all the Old repining to-day in thee. 



Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, 

Of value is thy freight, 't is not the Present only. 

The Past is also stored in thee. 

Thou boldest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the 
Western continent alone, 

Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel O ship, is steadied by 
thy spars, 

With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations 
sink or swim with thee. 

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, 
thou bear'st the other continents. 

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port tri- 
umphant; 



110 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Steer then with good strong hand and wary eye helms- 
man, thou earnest great companions, 
Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with thee. 
And royal feudal Europe sails with thee. 



Beautiful world of new superber birth that rises to my eyes, 
Like a limitless golden cloud filling the western sky. 
Emblem of general maternity lifted above all, 
Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and sons. 
Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in ceaseless pro- 
cession issuing, 
Acceding from such gestation, taking and giving continual 

strength and life. 
World of the real — world of the twain in one. 
World of the soul, born by the world of the real alone, led 

to identity, body, by it alone. 
Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses of composite 

precious materials, 
By history's cycles forwarded, by every nation, language, 

hither sent. 
Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric world, to be 

constructed here, 
(The true New World, the world of orbic science, morals, 

literatures to come,) 
Thou wonder world yet undefined, unform'd, neither do I 

define thee. 
How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of the future? 
I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as good, 
I watch thee advancing, absorbing the present, transcend- 
ing the past, 
I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow shadowing, as if the 
entire globe. 



THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD 111 

But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly to compre- 
hend thee, 
I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now, 
I merely thee ejaculate! 

Thee in thy future, 

Thee in thy only permanent life, career, thy own unloosened 

mind, thy soaring spirit. 
Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, ablaze, swift- 
moving, fructifying all. 
Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, in endless great 

hilarity, 
Scattering for good the cloud that hung so long, that 

weigh'd so long upon the mind of man, 
The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, certain decadence 

of man; 
Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, male — thee in thy 

athletes, moral, spiritual, South, North, West, East, 
(To thy immortal breasts. Mother of All, thy every daugh- 
ter, son, endear'd ahke, forever equal,) 
Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, unborn yet, but 

certain. 
Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization, (until which thy 

proudest material civilization must remain in vain,) 
Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing worship — thee in 

no single bible, saviour, merely. 
Thy saviours countless, latent within thyself, thy bibles 

incessant within thyself, equal to any, divine as any, 
(Thy soaring course thee formulating, not in thy two great 

wars, nor in thy century-'s visible growth. 
But far more in these leaves and chants, thy chants, great 

Mother!) 
Thee in an education grown of thee, in teachers, studies, 

students, born of thee. 



112 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Thee in thy democratic fetes en-masse, thy high original 
festivals, operas, lecturers, preachers, 

Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only now completed, 
the edifice on sure foundations tied,) 

Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy topmost ra- 
tional joys, thy love and godlike aspiration. 

In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full-lung*d orators, 
thy sacerdotal bards, kosmic savans, 

These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to-day I prophesy. 



6 

Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for the good alone, all 

good for thee. 
Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto thyself, 
Under the rule of God to be a rule unto thyself. 

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars. 

To be thy natal stars my country. Ensemble, Evolution, 

Freedom, 
Set in the sky of Law.) 

Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith. 

Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd, 

The general inner earth so long, so sedulously draped over, 

now hence for what it is boldly laid bare, 
Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit or bale. 

Not for success alone, 

Not to fair-sail unintermitted always. 

The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of war and worse 

than war shall cover thee all over, 
(Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? be capable of peace, 

its trials, 



THOU MOTHER WITH THY EQUAL BROOD 113 

For the tug and moral strain of nations came at last in pros- 
perous peace, not war;) 
In many a smiling mask death shall approach beguiling 

thee, thou in disease shalt swelter, 
The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, clinging upon thy 

breasts, seeking to strike thee deep within, 
Consumption of the worst, moral consumption, shall rouge 

thy face with hectic. 
But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy diseases, and surmount 

them all. 
Whatever they are to-day and whatever through time they 

may be. 
They each and all shall lift and pass away and cease from 

thee. 
While thou. Time's spirals rounding, out of thyself, thyself 

still extricating, fusing, 
Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the mortal with 

immortal blent,) 
Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the future, the spirit of 

the body and the mind. 
The soul, its destinies. 

The soul, its destinies, the real real, 
(Purport of all these apparitions of the real;) 
In thee America, the soul, its destinies. 
Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebulous! 
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd, (by these thy- 
self solidifying,) 
Thou mental, moral orb — thou New, indeed new. Spiritual 

World! 
The Present holds thee not — for such vast growth as thine, 
For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such brood as thine, 
The FuTUKE only holds thee and can hold thee. 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY^ 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

Mr. President, and Members of the Ohio Constitutional 
Convention : — 

I am profoundly sensible of the honor you have done me 
in asking me to address you. You are engaged in the funda- 
mental work of self-government; you are engaged in fram- 
ing a Constitution under and in accordance with which the 
people are to get and to do justice and absolutely to rule 
themselves. No representative body can have a higher task. 
To carry it through successfully there is need to combine 
practical common sense of the most hard-headed kind with 
a spirit of lofty idealism. Without idealism your work will 
be but a sordid makeshift; and without the hard-headed 
common sense the idealism will be either wasted or worse 
than wasted. 

I shall not try to speak to you of matters of detail. Each 
of our Commonwealths has its own local needs, local cus- 
toms, and habits of thought, different from those of other 
Commonwealths; and each must therefore apply in its own 
fashion the great principles of om* political life. But these 
principles themselves are in their essence applicable every- 
where, and of some of them I shall speak to you. I cannot 
touch upon them all; the subject is too vast and the time too 
limited; if any one of you cares to know my views of these 
matters which I do not to-day discuss, I will gladly send him 

* An address delivered before the Ohio Constitutional Convention, 
Columbus, Ohio, February, 1912. Reprinted (entire, save for the passage 
on the recall of judges) through the geoerous permission of the author and 
of the Outlook Publishing Company. 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 115 

a copy of the speeches I made in 1910, which I think cover 
most of the ground. 

I beheve in pure democracy. With Lincoln, I hold that 
" this country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who 
inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing 
Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of 
amending it." We Progressives believe that the people have 
the right, the power, and the duty to protect themselves and 
their own welfare; that human rights are supreme over all 
other rights; that wealth should be the servant, not the 
master, of the people. We believe that unless representative 
government does absolutely represent the people it is not 
representative government at all. We test the worth of all 
men and all measures by asking how they contribute to the 
welfare of the men, women, and children of whom this Na- 
tion is composed. We are engaged in one of the great battles 
of the age-long contest waged against privilege on behalf of 
the common welfare. We hold it a prime duty of the people 
to free our Go vernment from the control of money in politics. 
For this purpose we advocate, not as ends in themselves, but 
as weapons in the hands of the people, all governmental 
devices which will make the representatives of the people 
more easily and certainly responsible to the people's will. 

This country, as Lincoln said, belongs to the people. So 
do the natural resources which make it rich. They supply 
the basis of our prosperity now and hereafter. In preserving 
them, which is a National duty, we must not forget that 
monopoly is based on the control of natural resources and 
natural advantages, and that it will help the people little to 
conserve our natural wealth unless the benefits which it can 
yield are secured to the people. Let us remember, also, that 
Conservation does not stop with the natural resources, but 
that the principle of making the best use of all we have re- 
quires with equal or greater insistence that we shall stop the 



116 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

waste of human life in industry and prevent the waste of 
human welfare which flows from the unfair use of con- 
centrated power and wealth in the hands of men whose 
eagerness for profit blinds them to the cost of what they do. 
We have no higher duty than to promote the efficiency of 
the individual. There is no surer road to the efficiency of 
the Nation. 

I am emphatically a believer in constitutionalism, and 
because of this fact I no less emphatically protest against 
any theory that would make of the Constitution a means of 
thwarting instead of securing the absolute right of the people 
to rule themselves and to provide for their own social and 
industrial well-being. All constitutions, those of the States 
no less than that of the Nation, are designed, and must be 
interpreted and administered, so as to fit human rights. Lin- 
coln so interpreted and administered the National Consti- 
tution. Buchanan attempted the reverse, attempted to fit 
human rights to, and limit them by, the Constitution. It 
was Buchanan who treated the courts as a fetish, who pro- 
tested against and condemned all criticism of the judges for 
unjust and unrighteous decisions, and upheld the Constitu- 
tion as an instrument for the protection of privilege and of 
vested wrong. It was Lincoln who appealed to the people 
against the judges when the judges went wrong, who ad- 
vocated and secured what was practically the recall of 
the Dred Scott decision, and who treated the Constitu- 
tion as a living force for righteousness. We stand for ap- 
plying the Constitution to the issues of to-day as Lincoln 
applied it to the issues of his day; Lincoln, mind you, and 
not Buchanan, was the real upholder and preserver of the 
Constitution, for the true progressive, the progressive of 
the Lincoln stamp, is the only true constitutionalist, the 
only real conservative. The object of every American Con- 
stitution worth calling such must be what it is set forth 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 117 

to be in the preamble to the National Constitution, "to 
establish justice," that is, to secure justice as between 
man and man by means of genuine popular self-govern- 
ment. If the Constitution is successfully invoked to nullify 
the effort to remedy injustice, it is proof positive either 
that the Constitution needs immediate amendment or 
else that it is being wrongfully and improperly construed. 
I therefore very earnestly ask you clearly to provide in this 
Constitution means which will enable the people readily to 
amend it if at any point it works injustice, and also means 
which will permit the people themselves by popular vote, 
after due deliberation and discussion, but finally and without 
appeal, to settle what the proper construction of any con- 
stitutional point is. It is often said that ours is a govern- 
ment of checks and balances. But this should only mean 
that these checks and balances obtain as among the several 
different kinds of representatives of the people — judicial, 
executive, and legislative — to whom the people have dele- 
gated certain portions of their power. It does not mean that 
the people have parted with their power or cannot resume 
it. The "division of powers" is merely the division among 
the representatives of the powers delegated to them; the 
term must not be held to mean that the people have divided 
their power with their delegates. The power is the people's, 
and only the people's. It is right and proper that provision 
should be made rendering it necessary for the people to take 
ample time to make up their minds on any point; but there 
should also be complete provision to have their decision put 
into immediate and living effect when it has thus been de- 
liberately and definitely reached. 

I hold it to be the duty of every public servant, and of 
every man who in public or In private life holds a position of 
leadership in thought or action, to endeavor honestly and 
fearlessly to guide his fellow-countrymen to right decisions; 



118 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

but I emphatically dissent from the view that it is either 
wise or necessary to try to devise methods which under the 
Constitution will automatically prevent the people from de- 
ciding for themselves what governmental action they deem 
just and proper. It is impossible to invent constitutional 
devices which will prevent the popular will from being 
effective for wrong without also preventing it from being 
effective for right. The only safe course to follow in this 
great American democracy is to provide for making the 
popular judgment really effective. When this is done, then 
it is our duty to see that the people, having the full power, 
realize their heavy responsibility for exercising that power 
aright. But it is a false constitutionalism, a false states- 
manship, to endeavor by the exercise of a perverted in- 
genuity to seem to give the people full power and at the 
same time to trick them out of it. Yet that is precisely what 
is done in every case where the State permits its representa- 
tives, whether on the bench or in the Legislature or in ex- 
ecutive office, to declare that it has not the power to right 
grave social wrongs, or that any of the officers created by 
the people, and rightfully the servants of the people, can 
set themselves up to be the masters of the people. Consti- 
tution-makers should make it clear beyond shadow of doubt 
that the people in their legislative capacity have the power 
to enact into law any measure they deem necessary for the 
betterment of social and industrial conditions. The wisdom 
of framing any particular law of this kind is a proper sub- 
ject of debate; but the power of the people to enact the law 
should not be subject to debate. To hold the contrary view 
is to be false to the cause of the people, to the cause of 
American Democracy. 

Lincoln, with his clear vision, his ingrained sense of jus- 
tice, and his spirit of kindly friendliness to all, forecast 
our present struggle and saw the way out. What he said 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 119 

should be pondered by capitalist and workingman alike. 
He spoke as follows (I condense) : — 

I hold that while man exists it is his duty to improve not only 
his condition but to assist in ameliorating mankind. Labor is prior 
to and independent of capital. Labor is the superior of capital, and 
deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, 
which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor should 
this lead to a war upon property. Property is the fruit of labor. 
Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. Let not him 
who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work 
diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring that 
his own shall be safe from violence when built. 

This last sentence characteristically shows Lincoln's 
homely, kindly common sense. His is the attitude that we 
ought to take. He showed the proper sense of proportion in 
his relative estimates of capital and labor, of human rights 
and the rights of wealth. Above all, in what he thus said, as 
on so many other occasions, he taught the indispensable 
lesson of the need of wise kindliness and charity, of sanity 
and moderation, in the dealings of men one with another. 

We should discriminate between two purposes we have in 
view. The first is the effort to provide what are themselves 
the ends of good government; the second is the effort to 
provide proper machinery for the achievement of these ends. 

The ends of good government in our democracy are to 
secure by genuine popular rule a high average of moral and 
material well-being among our citizens. It has been well 
said that in the past we have paid attention only to the 
accumulation of prosperity, and that from henceforth we 
must pay equal attention to the proper distribution of pros- 
perity. This is true. The only prosperity worth having is 
that which affects the mass of the people. We are bound to 
strive for the fair distribution of prosperity. But it behooves 
us to remember that there is no use in devising methods for 



120 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

the proper distribution of prosperity unless the prosperity 
is there to distribute. I hold it to be our duty to see that the 
wage-worker, the small producer, the ordinary consumer, 
shall get their fair share of the benefit of business prosperity. 
But it either is or ought to be evident to every one that 
business has to prosper before anybody can get any benefit 
from it. Therefore I hold that he is the real progressive, 
that he is the genuine champion of the people, who endeav- 
ors to shape the policy alike of the Nation and of the several 
States so as to encourage legitimate and honest business at 
the same time that he wars against all crookedness and in- 
justice and unfairness and tyranny in the business world 
(for of course we can only get business put on a basis of 
permanent prosperity when the element of injustice is taken 
out of it). This is the reason why I have for so many years 
insisted, as regards our National Government, that it is 
both futile and mischievous to endeavor to correct the evils 
of big business by an attempt to restore business conditions 
as they were in the middle of the last century, before rail- 
ways and telegraphs had rendered larger business organiza- 
tions both inevitable and desirable. The effort to restore such 
conditions, and to trust for justice solely to such proposed 
restoration, is as foolish as if we should attempt to arm our 
troops with the flintlocks of Washington's Continentals in- 
stead of with modern weapons of precision. Flintlock legis- 
lation, of the kind that seeks to prohibit all combinations, 
good or bad, is bound to fail, and the effort, in so far as it 
accomplishes anything at all, merely means that some of the 
worst combinations are not checked, and that honest busi- 
ness is checked. What is needed is, first, the recognition 
that modern business conditions have come to stay, in so 
far at least as these conditions mean that business must be 
done in larger units, and then the cool-headed and resolute 
determination to introduce an effective method of regulat- 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 121 

ing big corporations so as to help legitimate business as an 
incident to thoroughly and completely safeguarding the 
interests of the people as a whole. We are a business people. 
The tillers of the soil, the wage-workers, the business men — 
these are the three big and vitally important divisions of our 
population. The welfare of each division is vitally necessary 
to the welfare of the people as a whole. The great mass of 
business is of course done by men whose business is either 
small or of moderate size. The middle-sized business men 
form an element of strength which is of literally incalculable 
value to the Nation. Taken as a class, they are among our 
best citizens. They have not been seekers after enormous 
fortunes; they have been moderately and justly prosperous, 
by reason of dealing fairly with their customers, competitors, 
and employees. They are satisfied with a legitimate profit 
that will pay their expenses of living and lay by something 
for those who come after, and the additional amount nec- 
essary for the betterment and improvement of their plant. 
The average business man of this type is, as a rule, a leading 
citizen of his community, foremost in everything that tells 
for its betterment, a man whom his neighbors look up to and 
respect; he is in no sense dangerous to his community, just 
because he is an integral part of his community, bone of its 
bone and flesh of its flesh. His life fibers are intertwined 
with the life fibers of his fellow-citizens. Yet nowadays 
many men of this kind, when they come to make necessary 
trade agreements with one another, find themselves in dan- 
ger of becoming unwitting transgressors of the law, and are 
at a loss to know what the law forbids and what it permits. 
This is all wrong. There should be a fixed governmental 
policy, a policy which shall clearly define and punish wrong- 
doing, and shall give in advance full information to any man 
as to just what he can and just what he cannot legally and 
properly do. It is absurd and wicked to treat the deliberate 



122 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

lawbreaker as on an exact par with the man eager to obey the 
law, whose only desire is to find out from some competent 
governmental authority what the law is and then live up to 
it. It is absurd to endeavor to regulate business in the in- 
terest of the public by means of longdrawn lawsuits without 
any accompaniment of administrative control and regula- 
tion, and without any attempt to discriminate between the 
honest man who has succeeded in business because of ren- 
dering a service to the public and the dishonest man who 
has succeeded in business by cheating the public. 

So much for the small business man and the middle-sized 
business man. Now for big business. It is imperative to ex- 
ercise over big business a control and supervision which is 
unnecessary as regards small business. All business must 
be conducted under the law, and all business men, big or 
little, must act justly. But a wicked big interest is neces- 
sarily more dangerous to the community than a wicked 
little interest. "Big business" in the past has been respon- 
sible for much of the special privilege which must be un- 
sparingly cut out of our National life. I do not believe in 
making mere size of and by itself criminal. The mere fact of 
size, however, does unquestionably carry the potentiality 
of such grave wrong-doing that there should be by law pro- 
vision made for the strict supervision and regulation of these 
great industrial concerns doing an inter-State business, much 
as we now regulate the transportation agencies which are 
engaged in inter-State business. The anti-trust law does 
good in so far as it can be invoked against combinations 
which really are monopolies or which restrict production or 
which artificially raise prices. But in so far as its workings 
are uncertain, or as it threatens corporations which have 
not been guilty of anti-social conduct, it does harm. More- 
over, it cannot by itself accomplish more than a trifling part 
of the governmental regulation of big business which is 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 123, 

needed. The Nation and the States must cooperate in this 
matter. Among the States that have entered this field Wis- 
consin has taken a leading place. Following Senator La 
Follette, a number of practical workers and thinkers in Wis- 
consin have turned that State into an experimental labora- 
tory of wise governmental action in aid of social and indus- 
trial justice. They have initiated the kind of progressive 
government which means not merely the preservation of 
true democracy, but the extension of the principle of true 
democracy into industrialism as well as into politics. One 
prime reason why the State has been so successful in this 
policy lies in the fact that it has done justice to corporations 
precisely as it has exacted justice from them. Its Public 
Utilities Commission in a recent report answered certain 
critics as follows : — 

To be generous to the people of the State at the expense of jus- 
tice to the carriers would be a species of official brigandage that 
ought to hold the perpetrators up to the execration of all honest 
men. Indeed, we have no idea that the people of Wisconsin have 
the remotest desire to deprive the railroads of the State of aught 
that, in equality and good conscience, belongs to them, and if any 
of them have, their wishes cannot be gratified by this Commission. 

This is precisely the attitude we should take towards big 
business. It is the practical application of the principle of 
the square deal. Not only as a matter of justice, but in our 
own interest, we should scrupulously respect the rights of 
honest and decent business and should encourage it where 
its activities make, as they often do make, for the common 
good. It is for the advantage of all of us when business pros- 
pers. It is for the advantage of all of us to have the United 
States become the leading nation in international trade, and 
w^e should not deprive this Nation, we should not deprive 
this people, of the instruments best adapted to secure such 
international commercial supremacy. In other words, our 



124 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

demand is that big business give the people a square deal 
and that the people give a square deal to any man engaged 
in big business who honestly endeavors to do what is right 
and proper. 

On the other hand, any corporation, big or little, which 
has gained its position by unfair methods and by interfer- 
ence with the rights of others, which has raised prices or 
limited output in improper fashion and been guilty of de- 
moralizing and corrupt practices, should not only be broken 
up, but it should be made the business of some competent 
governmental body by constant supervision to see that it 
does not come together again, save under such strict con- 
trol as to insure the community against all danger of a repe- 
tition of the bad conduct. The chief trouble with big busi- 
ness has arisen from the fact that big business has so often 
refused to abide by the principle of the square deal; the op- 
position which I personally have encountered from big busi- 
ness has in every case arisen not because I did not give a 
square deal but because I did. 

All business into which the element of monopoly in any 
way or degree enters, and where it proves in practice im- 
possible totally to eliminate this element of monopoly, 
should be carefully supervised, regulated, and controlled by 
governmental authority; and such control should be exer- 
cised by administrative, rather than by judicial, officers. 
No effort should be made to destroy a big corporation 
merely because it is big, merely because it has shown itself 
a peculiarly efficient business instrument. But we should 
not fear, if necessary, to bring the regulation of big corpora- 
tions to the point of controlling conditions so that the wage- 
worker shall have a wage more than sufficient to cover the 
bare cost of living, and hours of labor not so excessive as to 
wreck his strength by the strain of unending toil and leave 
him unfit to do his duty as a good citizen in the community. 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 125 

Where regulation by competition (which is, of course, prefer- 
able) proves insufficient, we should not shrink from bringing 
governmental regulation to the point of control of monopoly 
prices if it should ever become necessary to do so, just as in 
exceptional cases railway rates are now regulated. 

In emphasizing the part of the administrative department 
in regulating combinations and checking absolute monopoly, 
I do not, of course, overlook the obvious fact that the legis- 
lature and the judiciary must do their part. The legislature 
should make it more clear exactly what methods are illegal, 
and then the judiciary will be in a better position to punish 
adequately and relentlessly those who insist on defying the 
clear legislative decrees. I do not believe any absolute pri- 
vate monopoly is justified, but if our great combinations are 
properly supervised, so that immoral practices are prevented, 
absolute monopoly will not come to pass, as the laws of com- 
petition and efficiency are against it. 

The important thing is this: that, under such govern- 
ment recognition as we may give to that which is beneficent 
and wholesome in large business organizations, we shall be 
most vigilant never to allow them to crystallize into a con- 
dition 'which shall make private initiative difficult. It is of 
the utmost importance that in the future we shall keep the 
broad path of opportunity just as open and easy for our 
children as it was for our fathers during the period which 
has been the glory of America's industrial history — that it 
shall be not only possible but easy for an ambitious man, 
whose character has so impressed itself upon his neighbors 
that they are willing to give him capital and credit, to start 
in business for himself, and, if his superior efficiency deserves 
it, to triumph over the biggest organization that may hap- 
pen to exist in his particular field. Whatever practices upon 
the part of large combinations may threaten to discourage 
such a man, or deny to him that which in the judgment of 



126 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

the community is a square deal, should be specifically de- 
fined by the statutes as crimes. And in every case the indi- 
vidual corporation officer responsible for such unfair dealing 
should be punished. 

We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own 
power and sagacity exercised with entire regard to the wel- 
fare of his fellows. We have only praise for the business man 
whose business success comes as an incident to doing good 
work for his fellows. But we should so shape conditions that 
a fortune shall be obtained only in honorable fashion, in such 
fashion that its gaining represents benefit to the community. 

In a word, then, our fundamental purpose must be to 
secure genuine equality of opportunity. No man should 
receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. 
Every dollar received should represent a dollar's worth of 
service rendered. No watering of stocks should be permitted ; 
and it can be prevented only by close governmental super- 
vision of all stock issues, so as to prevent overcapitalization. 

We stand for the rights of property, but we stand even 
more for the rights of man. We will protect the rights of the 
wealthy man, but we maintain that he holds his wealth sub- 
ject to the general right of the community to regulate its 
business use as the public welfare requires. 

We also maintain that the Nation and the several States 
have the right to regulate the terms and conditions of labor, 
which is the chief element of wealth, directly in the interest 
of the common good. It is our prime duty to shape the in- 
dustrial and social forces so that they may tell for the ma- 
terial and moral upbuilding of the farmer and the wage- 
worker, just as they should do in the case of the business 
man. You, framers of this Constitution, be careful so to 
frame it that under it the people shall leave themselves free 
to do whatever is necessary in order to help the farmers of 
the State to get for themselves and their wives and children 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 127 

not only the benefits of better farming but also those of 
better business methods and better conditions of life on the 
farm. 

Moreover, shape your constitutional action so that the peo- 
ple will be able through their legislative bodies, or, failing 
that, by direct popular vote, to provide workmen's compen- 
sation acts, to regulate the hours of labor for children and 
for women, to provide for their safety while at work, and to 
prevent overwork or work under unhygienic or unsafe con- 
ditions. See to it that no restrictions are placed upon legis- 
lative powers that will prevent the enactment of laws under 
which your people can promote the general welfare, the com- 
mon good. Thus only will the "general welfare" clause of 
our Constitution become a vital force for progress, instead 
of remaining a mere phrase. This also applies to the police 
powers of the Government. Make it perfectly clear that on 
every point of this kind it is your intention that the people 
shall decide for themselves how far the laws to achieve their 
purposes shall go, and that their decision shall be binding 
upon every citizen in the State, official or non-official, un- 
less, of course, the Supreme Court of the Nation in any given 
case decides otherwise. 

So much for the ends of government; and I have, of course, 
merely sketched in outline what the ends should be. Now 
for the machinery by which these ends are to be achieved; 
and here again remember I only sketch in outline and do not 
for a moment pretend to work out in detail the methods of 
achieving your purposes. Let me at the outset urge upon 
you to remember that, while machinery is important, it is 
easy to overestimate its importance; and, moreover, that 
each community has the absolute right to determine for it- 
self what that machinery shall be, subject only to the fun- 
damental law of the Nation as expressed in the Constitution 
of the United States. Massachusetts has the right to have 



128 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

appointive judges who serve during good behavior, subject 
to removal, not by impeachment, but by simple majority 
vote of the two houses of the Legislature whenever the rep- 
resentatives of the people feel that the needs of the people 
require such removal. New York has the right to have a long- 
term elective judiciary. Ohio has the right to have a short- 
term elective judiciary without the recall. California, Ore- 
gon, and Arizona have each and every one of them the 
right to have a short-term elective judiciary with the recall. 
Personally, of the four systems I prefer the Massachusetts 
one, if addition be made to it as I hereinafter indicate; but 
that is merely my preference; and neither I nor any one else 
within or without public life has the right to impose his 
preference upon any community when the question is as to 
how that community chooses to arrange for its executive, 
legislative, or judicial functions. But as you have invited 
me to address you here, I will give you my views as to the 
kind of governmental machinery which at this time and 
under existing social and industrial conditions it seems to me 
that, as a people, we need. 

In the first place, I believe in the short ballot. You can- 
not get good service from the public servant if you cannot 
see him, and there is no more effective way of hiding him 
than by mixing him up with a multitude of others so that 
they are none of them important enough to catch the eye of 
the average, workaday citizen. The crook in public life is 
not ordinarily the man whom the people themselves elect 
directly to a highly important and responsible position. The 
type of boss who has made the name of politician odious 
rarely himself runs for high elective office; and if he does and 
is elected, the people have only themselves to blame. The 
professional politician and the professional lobbyist thrive 
most rankly under a system which provides a multitude of 
elective officers, of such divided responsibility and of such 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 129 

obscurity that the pubUc knows, and can know, but Httle as 
to their duties and the way they perform them. The people 
have nothing whatever to fear from giving any pubUc serv- 
ant power so long as they retain their own power to hold 
him accountable for his use of the power they have delegated 
to him. You will get best service where you elect only a few 
men, and where each man has his definite duties and re- 
sponsibilities, and is obliged to work in the open, so that the 
people know who he is and what he is doing, and have the 
information that will enable them to hold him to account 
for his stewardship. 

I believe in providing for direct nominations by the people, 
including therein direct preferential primaries for the election 
of delegates to the National nominating conventions. Not 
as a matter of theory, but as a matter of plain and proved 
experience, we find that the convention system, while it often 
records the popular will, is also often used by adroit poli- 
ticians as a method of thwarting the popular will. In other 
words, the existing machinery for nominations is cumbrous, 
and is not designed to secure the real expression of the pop- 
ular desire. Now as good citizens we are all of us willing to 
acquiesce cheerfully in a nomination secured by the expres- 
sion of a majority of the people, but we do not like to ac- 
quiesce in a nomination secured by adroit political manage- 
ment in defeating the wish of the majority of the people. 

I believe in the election of United States Senators by direct 
vote. Just as actual experience convinced our people that 
Presidents should be elected (as they now are in practice, 
although not in theory) by direct vote of the people instead 
of by indirect vote through an untrammeled electoral college, 
so actual experience has convinced us that Senators should 
be elected by direct vote of the people instead of indirectly 
through the various Legislatures. 

I believe in the initiative and the referendum, which 



130 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

should be used not to destroy representative government, 
but to correct it whenever it becomes misrepresentative. 
Here again I am concerned not with theories but with actual 
facts. If in any State the people are themselves satisfied 
with their present representative system, then it is of course 
their right to keep that system unchanged; and it is nobody's 
business but theirs. But in actual practice it has been found 
in very many States that legislative bodies have not been 
responsive to the popular will. Therefore I believe that the 
State should provide for the possibility of direct popular 
action in order to make good such legislative failure. The 
power to invoke such direct action, both by initiative and 
by referendum, should be provided in such fashion as to pre- 
vent its being wantonly or too frequently used. I do not 
believe that it should be made the easy or ordinary way of 
taking action. In the great majority of cases it is far better 
that action on legislative matters should be taken by those 
specially delegated to perform the task; in other words, that 
the work should be done by the experts chosen to perform it. 
But where the men thus delegated fail to perform their duty, 
then it should be in the power of the people themselves to 
perform the duty. In a recent speech Governor McGovern, 
of Wisconsin, has described the plan which has been there 
adopted. Under this plan the effort to obtain the law is 
first to be made through the Legislature, the bill being 
pushed as far as it will go; so that the details of the proposed 
measure may be threshed over in actual legislative debate. 
This gives opportunity to perfect it in form and invites pub- 
lic scrutiny. Then, if the Legislature fails to enact it, it can 
be enacted by the people on their own initiative, taken at 
least four months before election. Moreover, where possible, 
the question actually to be voted on by the people should be 
made as simple as possible. In short, I believe that the ini- 
tiative and referendum should be used, not as substitutes for 



A CHARTER OF DEMOCRACY 131 

representative government, but as methods of making such 
government really representative. Action by the initiative or 
referendum ought not to be the normal way of legislation; 
but the power to take it should be provided in the Constitu- 
tion, so that if the representatives fail truly to represent the 
people on some matter of sufficient importance to rouse pop- 
ular interest, then the people shall have in their hands the 
facilities to make good the failure. And I urge you not to try 
to put constitutional fetters on the Legislature, as so many 
constitution-makers have recently done. Such action on 
your part would invite the courts to render nugatory every 
legislative act to better social conditions. Give the Legisla- 
ture an entirely free hand; and then provide by the initia- 
tive and referendum that the people shall have power to 
reverse or supplement the work of the Legislature should 
it ever become necessary. 

As to the recall, I do not believe that there is any great 
necessity for it as regards short-term elective officers. On 
abstract grounds I was originally inclined to be hostile to it. 
I know of one case where it was actually used with mischiev- 
ous results. On the other hand, in three cases in municipali- 
ties on the Pacific Coast which have come to my knowledge 
it was used with excellent results. I believe it should be 
generally provided, but with such restrictions as will make 
it available only when there is a widespread and genuine 
public feeling among a majority of the voters. 

There remains the question of the recall of judges. . . . 

Now, gentlemen, in closing, and in thanking you for your 
courtesy, let me add one word. Keep clearly in view what 
are the fundamental ends of government. Remember that 
methods are merely the machinery by which these ends are 
to be achieved. I hope that not only you and I but all our 
people may ever remember that while good laws are neces- 
sary, while it is necessary to have the right kind of govern- 



132 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY . 

mental machinery, yet that the all-important matter is to 
have the right kind of man behind the law. A State cannot 
rise without proper laws, but the best laws that the wit of 
man can devise will amount to nothing if the State does not 
contain the right kind of man, the right kind of woman. 
A good Constitution, and good laws under the Constitution, 
and fearless and upright officials to administer the laws — 
all these are necessary; but the prime requisite in our Na- 
tional life is, and must always be, the possession by the aver- 
age citizen of the right kind of character. Our aim must be 
the moralization of the individual, of the government, of the 
people as a whole. We desire the moralization not only of 
political conditions but of industrial conditions, so that every 
force in the community, individual and collective, may be 
directed towards securing for the average man, and average 
woman, a higher and better and fuller life, in the things of 
the body no less than those of the mind and the soul. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR ^ 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

Mr. President and Gentlemen, — I greet you on the 
recommencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is 
one of hope, and, perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not 
meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation of his- 
tories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for par- 
liaments of love and poesy, like the Troubadours; nor for 
the advancement of science, like our contemporaries in the 
British and European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has 
been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the love of 
letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. 
As such it is precious as the sign of an indestructible instinct. 
Perhaps the time is already come when it ought to be, and 
will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this 
continent will look from under its iron lids and fill the post- 
poned expectation of the world with something better than 
the exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, 
our long apprenticeship to the learning of other lands, draws 
to a close. The millions that around us are rushing into life, 
cannot always be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. 
Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that will sing 
themselves. Who can doubt that poetry will revive and 
lead in a new age, as the star in the constellation Harp, 
which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, 
shall one day be the pole-star for a thousand years? 

* Our "Intellectual Declaration of Independence," as Oliver Wendell 
Holmes called it, was delivered before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, in 
Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 31, 1837. 



134 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

In this hope I accept the topic which not only usage but 
the nature of our association seem to prescribe to this day, 
— the American Scholar. Year by year we come up hither 
to read one more chapter of his biography. Let us inquire 
what light new days and events have thrown on his char- 
acter and his hopes. 

It is one of those fables which out of an unknown an- 
tiquity convey an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the 
beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more 
helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, 
the better to answer its end. 

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new and sublime; 
that there is One Man, — present to all particular men only 
partially, or through one faculty; and that you must take the 
whole society to find the whole man. Man is not a farmer, 
or a professor, or an engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, 
and scholar, and statesman, and producer, and soldier. In 
the divided or social state these functions are parcelled out 
to individuals, each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint 
work, whilst each other performs his. The fable implies that 
the individual, to possess himself, must sometimes return 
from his own labor to embrace all the other laborers. But, 
unfortunately, this original unit, this fountain of power, 
has been so distributed to multitudes, has been so minutely 
subdivided and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, and 
cannot be gathered. The state of society is one in which the 
members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and 
strut about so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a 
neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man. 

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, into many 
things. The planter, who is Man sent out into the field to 
gather food, is seldom cheered by any idea of the true dig- 
nity of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his cart, and 
nothing beyond, and sinks into the farmer, instead of Man 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 135 

on the farm. The tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal 
worth to his work, but is ridden by the routine of his craft, 
and the soul is subject to dollars. The priest becomes a 
form; the attorney a statute-book; the mechanic a machine; 
the sailor a rope of the ship. 

In this distribution of functions the scholar is the dele- 
gated intellect. In the right state he is Man Thinking. In 
the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to 
become a mere thinker, or still worse, the parrot of other 
men's thinking. 

In this view of him, as Man Thinking, the theory of his 
oflSce is contained. Him Nature solicits with all her placid, 
all her monitory pictures; him the past instructs; him the 
future invites. Is not indeed every man a student, and do 
not all things exist for the student's behoof.'^ And, finally, is 
not the true scholar the only true master .^^ But the old oracle 
said, "All things have two handles: beware of the wrong 
one." In life, too often, the scholar errs with mankind and 
forfeits his privilege. Let us see him in his school, and con- 
sider him in reference to the main influences he receives. 

I. The first in time and the first in importance of the in- 
fluences upon the mind is that of nature. Every day, the 
sun; and, after sunset. Night and her stars. Ever the winds 
blow; ever the grass grows. Every day, men and women, 
conversing, beholding and beholden. The scholar is he of 
all men whom this spectacle most engages. He must settle 
its value in his mind. What is nature to him? There is 
never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexpli- 
cable continuity of this web of God, but always circular 
power returning into itself. Therein it resembles his own 
spirit, whose beginning, whose ending, he never can find, — so 
entire, so boundless. Far too as her splendors shine, system 
on system shooting like rays, upward, downward, without 



136 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

centre, without circumference, — in the mass and in the 
particle, Nature hastens to render account of herself to the 
mind. Classification begins. To the young mind everything 
is individual, stands by itself. By and by, it finds how to 
join two things and see in them one nature; then three, then 
three thousand; and so, tyrannized over by its own unifying 
instinct, it goes on tying things together, diminishing anom- 
alies, discovering roots running under ground whereby con- 
trary and remote things cohere and flower out from one 
stem. It presently learns that since the dawn of history there 
has been a constant accumulation and classifying of facts. 
But what is classification but the perceiving that these 
objects are not chaotic, and are not foreign, but have a law 
which is also a law of the human mind? The astronomer 
discovers that geometry, a pure abstraction of the human 
mind, is the measure of planetary motion. The chemist finds 
proportions and intelligible method throughout matter; 
and science is nothing but the finding of analogy, identity, 
in the most remote parts. The ambitious soul sits down be- 
fore each refractory fact ; one after another reduces all strange 
constitutions, all new powers, to their class and their law, 
and goes on forever to animate the last fibre of organization, 
the outskirts of nature, by insight. 

Thus to him, to this school-boy under the bending dome 
of day, is suggested that he and it proceed from one root; 
one is leaf and one is flower; relation, sympathy, stirring in 
every vein. And what is that root? Is not that the soul of 
his soul? A thought too bold; a dream too wild. Yet when 
this spiritual light shall have revealed the law of more 
earthly natures, — when he has learned to worship the soul, 
and to see that the natural philosophy that now is, is only 
the first gropings of its gigantic hand, he shall look forward 
to an ever expanding knowledge as to a becoming creator. 
He shall see that nature is the opposite of the soul, answer- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 137 

ing to it part for part. One is seal and one is print. Its 
beauty is the beauty of his own mind. Its laws are the laws 
of his own mind. Nature then becomes to him the measure 
of his attainments. So much of nature as he is ignorant of, 
so much of his own mind does he not yet possess. And, in 
fine, the ancient precept, ''Know thyself," and the modern 
precept, "Study nature," become at last one maxim. 

II. The next great influence into the spirit of the scholar 
is the mind of the Past, — in whatever form, whether of 
literature, of art, of institutions, that mind is inscribed. 
Books are the best type of the influence of the past, and per- 
haps we shall get at the truth, — learn the amount of this 
influence more conveniently, — by considering their value 
alone. 

The theory of books is noble. The scholar of the first age 
received into him the world around; brooded thereon; gave 
it the new arrangement of his own mind, and uttered it again. 
It came into him life; it went out from him truth. It came 
to him short-lived actions; it went out from him immortal 
thoughts. It came to him business; it went from him poetry. 
It was dead fact ; now, it is quick thought. It can stand, and 
it can go. It now endures, it now flies, it now inspires. Pre- 
cisely in proportion to the depth of mind from which it is- 
sued, so high does it soar, so long does it sing. 

Or, I might say, it depends on how far the process had 
gone, of transmuting life into truth. In proportion to the 
completeness of the distillation, so will the purity and im- 
perishableness of the product be. But none is quite perfect. 
As no air-pump can by any means make a perfect vacuum, 
so neither can any artist entirely exclude the conventional, 
the local, the perishable from his book, or write a book of 
pure thought, that shall be as efficient, in all respects, to 
a remote posterity, as to contemporaries, or rather to the 
second age. Each age, it is found, must write its own books; 



138 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The 
books of an older period will not fit this. 

Yet hence arises a grave mischief. The sacredness which 
attaches to the act of creation, the act of thought, is trans- 
ferred to the record. The poet chanting was felt to be 
a divine man: henceforth the chant is divine also. The 
writer was a just and wise spirit: henceforward it is settled 
the book is perfect; as love of the hero corrupts into wor- 
ship of his statue. Instantly the book becomes noxious: the 
guide is a tyrant. The sluggish and perverted mind of the 
multitude, slow to open to the incursions of Reason, having 
once so opened, having once received this book, stands upon 
it, and makes an outcry if it is disparaged. Colleges are 
built on it. Books are written on it by thinkers, not by Man 
Thinking; by men of talent, that is, who start wrong, who 
set out from accepted dogmas, not from their own sight of 
principles. Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing 
it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, 
which Bacon, have given; forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and 
Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote 
these books. 

Hence, instead of Man Thinking, we have the bookworm. 
Hence the book-learned class, who value books, as such; not 
as related to nature and the human constitution, but as 
making a sort of Third Estate with the world and the soul. 
Hence the restorers of readings, the emendators, the bib- 
liomaniacs of all degrees. 

Books are the best of things, well used; abused, among the 
worst. What is the right use? What is the one end which all 
means go to effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I 
had better never see a book than to be warped by its attrac- 
tion clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead 
of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the 
active soul. This every man is entitled to; this every man 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 139 

contains within him, although in almost all men obstructed, 
and as yet unborn. The soul active sees absolute truth and 
utters truth, or creates. In this action it is genius; not the 
privilege of here and there a favorite, but the sound estate 
of every man. In its essence it is progressive. The book, the 
college, the school of art, the institution of any kind, stop 
with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say they, 

— let us hold by this. They pin me down. They look back- 
ward and not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of 
man are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead : man hopes : 
genius creates. Whatever talents may be, if the man create 
not, the pure efflux of the Deity is not his; — cinders and 
smoke there may be, but not yet flame. There are creative 
manners, there are creative actions, and creative words; 
manners, actions, words, that is, indicative of no custom or 
authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's own 
sense of good and fair. 

On the other part, instead of being its own seer, let it 
receive from another mind its truth, though it were in tor- 
rents of light, without periods of solitude, inquest, and self- 
recovery, and a fatal disservice is done. Genius is always 
sufficiently the enemy of genius by over-influence. The 
literature of every nation bears me witness. The English 
dramatic poets have Shakspearized now for two hundred 
years. 

Undoubtedly there is a right way of reading, so it be 
sternly subordinated. Man Thinking must not be subdued 
by his instruments. Books are for the scholar's idle times. 
When he can read God directly, the hour is too precious to 
be wasted in other men's transcripts of their readings. But 
when the intervals of darkness come, as come they must, — 
when the sun is hid and the stars withdraw their shining, 

— we repair to the lamps which were kindled by their ray, 
to guide our steps to the East again, where the dawn is. We 



140 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

hear, that we may speak. The Arabian proverb says, "A 
fig tree, looking on a fig tree, become th fruitful." 

It is remarkable, the character of the pleasure we derive 
from the best books. They impress us with the conviction 
that one nature wrote and the same reads. We read the 
verses of one of the great English poets, of Chaucer, of Mar- 
veil, of Dryden, with the most modern joy, — with a pleas- 
ure, I mean, which is in great part caused by the abstraction 
of all time from their verses. There is some awe mixed with 
the joy of our surprise, when this poet, who lived in some 
past world, two or three hundred years ago, says that which 
lies close to my own soul, that which I also had well-nigh 
thought and said. But for the evidence thence afforded to 
the philosophical doctrine of the identity of all minds, we 
should suppose some preestablished harmony, some fore- 
sight of souls that were to be, and some preparation of stores 
for their future wants, like the fact observed in insects, who 
lay up food before death for the young grub they shall never 
see. 

I would not be hurried by any love of system, by any 
exaggeration of instincts, to underrate the Book. We all 
know, that as the human body can be nourished on any 
food, though it were boiled grass and the broth of shoes, so 
the human mind can be fed by any knowledge. And great 
and heroic men have existed who had almost no other in- 
formation than by the printed page. I only would say that 
it needs a strong head to bear that diet. One must be an in- 
ventor to read well. As the proverb says, "He that would 
bring home the wealth of the Indies, must carry out the 
wealth of the Indies." There is then creative reading as well 
as creative writing. When the mind is braced by labor and 
invention, the page of whatever book we read becomes lumi- 
nous with manifold allusion. Every sentence is doubly sig- 
nificant, and the sense of our author is as broad as the world. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 141 

We then see, what is always true, that as the seer's hour of 
vision is short and rare among heavy days and months, so is 
its record, perchance, the least part of his volume. The dis- 
cerning will read, in his Plato or Shakspeare, only that least 
part, — only the authentic utterances of the oracle; — all 
the rest he rejects, were it never so many times Plato's and 
Shakespeare's. 

Of course there is a portion of reading quite indispensable 
to a wise man. History and exact science he must learn by 
laborious reading. Colleges, in like manner, have their in- 
dispensable office, — to teach elements. But they can only 
highly serve us when they aim not to drill, but to create; 
when they gather from far every ray of various genius to 
their hospitable halls, and by the concentrated fires, set the 
hearts of their youth on flame. Thought and knowledge are 
natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. 
Gowns and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, 
can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. 
Forget this, and our American colleges will recede in their 
public importance, whilst they grow richer every year. 

III. There goes in the world a notion that the scholar 
should be a recluse, a valetudinarian, — as unfit for any 
handiwork or public labor as a penknife for an axe. The so- 
called "practical men" sneer at speculative men, as if, be- 
cause they speculate or see, they could do nothing. I have 
heard it said that the clergy, — who are always more uni- 
versally than any other class, the scholars of their day, — 
are addressed as women; that the rough, spontaneous con- 
versation of men they do not hear, but only a mincing and 
diluted speech. They are often virtually disfranchised; and 
indeed there are advocates for their celibacy. As far as this 
is true of the studious classes, it is not just and wise. Action 
is with the scholar subordinate, but it is essential. Without 



142 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

it he is not yet man. Without it thought can never ripen 
into truth. ^Yhilst the world hangs before the eye as a cloud 
of beauty, we cannot even see its beauty. Inaction is cow- 
ardice, but there can be no scholar without the heroic mind. 
The preamble of thought, the transition through which 
it passes from the unconscious to the conscious, is action. 
Only so much do I know, as I have lived. Instantly we know 
whose words are loaded with life, and whose not. 

The world, — this shadow of the soul, or other nie, lies 
wide around. Its attractions are the keys which unlock my 
thoughts and make me acquainted with myself. I run eagerly 
into this resounding tumult. I grasp the hands of those next 
me, and take my place in the ring to suffer and to work, 
taught by an instinct that so shall the dumb abyss be vocal 
with speech. I pierce its order; I dissipate its fear; I dispose 
of it within the circuit of my expanding life. So much only 
of life as I know by experience, so much of the wilderness 
have I vanquished and planted, or so far have I extended 
my being, my dominion. I do not see how any man can 
afford, for the sake of his nerves and his nap, to spare any 
action in which he can partake. It is pearls and rubies to his 
discourse. Drudgery, calamity, exasperation, want, are in- 
structors in eloquence and wisdom. The true scholar grudges 
every opportunity of action past by, as a loss of power. 

It is the raw material out of which the intellect moulds 
her splendid products. A strange process too, this by which 
experience is converted into thought, as a mulberry leaf is 
converted into satin. The manufacture goes forward at all 
hours. 

The actions and events of our childhood and youth are 
now matters of calmest observation. They lie hke fair pic- 
tures in the air. Not so with our recent actions, — with the 
business which we now have in hand. On this we are quite 
unable to speculate. Our affections as yet circulate through 



THE .A3IERICAN SCHOL.VR 143 

it. We no more feel or know it than we feel the feet, or the 
hand, or the brain of oiu- body. The new deed is yet a part of 
life, — remains for a time immersed in our miconscious life. 
In some contemplative hoiu* it detaches itself from the life 
hke a ripe fruit, to become a thought of the mind. Instantly 
it is raised, transfigured; the corruptible has put on incor- 
ruption. Henceforth it is an object of beauty, however base 
its origin and neighborhood. Observe too the impossibility 
of antedating this act. In its grub state, it cannot fly, it 
cannot shine, it is a dull grub. But suddenly, without ob- 
servation, the selfsame thing unfiu-ls beautiful wings, and is 
an angel of wisdom. So is there no fact, no event, in our 
private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its 
adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our 
body into the emp\Tean. Cradle and infancy, school and 
playground, the fear of boys, and dogs, and ferules, the love 
of little maids and berries, and many another fact that once 
filled the whole skj', are gone already; friend and relative, 
profession and party, town and country, nation and world, 
must also soar and sing. 

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit 
actions has the richest retm-n of wisdom. I will not shut 
myself out of this globe of action, and transplant an oak into 
a flower-pot, there to hunger and pine; nor trust the revenue 
of some single faculty, and exhaust one vein of thought, 
much like those Savoyards, who, getting their livelihood 
by carving shepherds, shepherdesses, and smoking Dutch- 
men, for all Europe, went out one day to the mountain to 
find stock, and discovered that they had whittled up the 
last of their pine-trees. Authors we have, in numbers, who 
have written out their vein, and who. moved by a commend- 
able prudence, saU for Greece or Palestine, follow the trap- 
per into the prairie, or ramble round ^Vlgiers, to replenish 
their merchantable stock. 



144 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

If it were only for a vocabulary, the scholar would be 
covetous of action. Life is our dictionary. Years are well 
spent in country labors; in town; in the insight into trades 
and manufactures; in frank intercourse with many men and 
women; in science; in art; to the one end of mastering in all 
their facts a language by which to illustrate and embody 
our perceptions. I learn immediately from any speaker 
how much he has already lived, through the poverty or the 
splendor of his speech. Life lies behind us as the quarry 
from whence we get tiles and copestones for the masonry of 
to-day. This is the way to learn grammar. Colleges and 
books only copy the language which the field and the work- 
yard made. 

But the final value of action, like that of books, and better 
than books, is that it is a resource. That great principle of 
Undulation in natiu-e, that shows itself in the inspiring and 
expiring of the breath; in desire and satiety; in the ebb and 
flow of the sea; in day and night; in heat and cold; and, as 
yet more deeply ingrained in every atom and every fluid, is 
known to us under the name of Polarity, — these "fits of 
easy transmission and reflection," as Newton called them, — 
are the law of nature because they are the law of spirit. 

The mind now thinks, now acts, and each fit reproduces 
the other. When the artist has exhausted his materials, 
when the fancy no longer paints, when thoughts are no 
longer apprehended and books are a weariness, — he has 
always the resource to live. Character is higher than intel- 
lect. Thinking is the function. Living is the functionary. 
The stream retreats to its source. A great soul will be strong 
to live, as well as strong to think. Does he lack organ or me- 
dium to impart his truth? He can still fall back on this ele- 
mental force of living them. This is a total act. Thinking is 
a partial act. Let the grandeur of justice shine in his affairs. 
Let the beauty of affection cheer his lowly roof. Those "far 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 145 

from fame," who dwell and act with him, will feel the force 
of his constitution in the doings and passages of the day- 
better than it can be measured by any public and designed 
display. Time shall teach him that the scholar loses no hour 
which the man lives. Herein he unfolds the sacred germ of 
his instinct, screened from influence. What is lost in seemli- 
ness is gained in strength. Not out of those on whom sys- 
tems of education have exhausted their culture, comes the 
helpful giant to destroy the old or to build the new, but out 
of unhandselled savage nature; out of terrible Druids and 
Berserkers come at last Alfred and Shakspeare. 

I hear therefore with joy whatever is beginning to be said 
of the dignity and necessity of labor to every citizen. There 
is virtue yet in the hoe and the spade, for learned as well as 
for unlearned hands. And labor is everywhere welcome; al- 
ways we are invited to work; only be this limitation ob- 
served, that a man shall not for the sake of wider activity 
sacrifice any opinion to the popular judgments and modes 
of action. 

I have now spoken of the education of the scholar by 
nature, by books, and by action. It remains to say some- 
what of his duties. 

They are such as become Man Thinking. They may all 
be comprised in self -trust. The office of the scholar is to 
cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts 
amidst appearances. He plies the slow, unhonored, and un- 
paid task of observation. Flamsteed and Herschel, in their 
glazed observatories, may catalogue the stars with the praise 
of all men, and the results being splendid and useful, honor 
is sure. But he, in his private observatory, cataloguing ob- 
scure and nebulous stars of the human mind, which as yet 
no man has thought of as such, — watching days and months 
sometimes for a few facts; correcting still his old records; — 



146 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

must relinquish display and immediate fame. In the long 
period of his preparation he must betray often an ignorance 
and shiftlessness in popular arts, incurring the disdain of the 
able who shoulder him aside. Long he must stammer in 
his speech; often forego the living for the dead. Worse yet, 
he must accept, — how often ! poverty and solitude. For 
the ease and pleasure of treading the old road, accepting the 
fashions, the education, the religion of society, he takes the 
cross of making his own, and, of course, the self -accusation, 
the faint heart, the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, 
which are the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the 
self -relying and self -directed; and the state of virtual hos- 
tility in which he seems to stand to society, and especially 
to educated society. For all this loss and scorn what offset? 
He is to find consolation in exercising the highest functions 
of human nature. He is one who raises himself from private 
considerations and breathes and lives on public and illustri- 
ous thoughts. He is the world's eye. He is the world's heart. 
He is to resist the vulgar prosperity that retrogrades ever to 
barbarism, by preserving and communicating heroic senti- 
ments, noble biographies, melodious verse, and the conclu- 
sions of history. Whatsoever oracles the human heart, in 
all emergencies, in all solemn hours, has uttered as its com- 
mentary on the world of actions, — these he shall receive 
and impart. And whatsoever new verdict Reason from her 
inviolable seat pronounces on the passing men and events 
of to-day, — this he shall hear and promulgate. 

These being his functions, it becomes him to feel all con- 
fidence in himself, and to defer never to the popular cry. He 
and he only knows the world. The world of any moment is 
the merest appearance. Some great decorum, some fetish of 
a government, some ephemeral trade, or war, or man, is 
cried up by half mankind and cried down by the other half, 
as if all depended on this particular up or down. The odds 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 147 

are that the whole question is not worth the poorest thought 
which the scholar has lost in listening to the controversy. 
Let him not quit his belief that a popgun is a popgun, though 
the ancient and honorable of the earth affirm it to be the 
crack of doom. In silence, in steadiness, in severe abstrac- 
tion, let him hold by himself; add observation to observa- 
tion, patient of neglect, patient of reproach, and bide his 
own time, — happy enough if he can satisfy himself alone 
that this day he has seen something truly. Success treads 
on every right step. For the instinct is sure, that prompts 
him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns that 
in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has de- 
scended into the secrets of all minds. He learns that he who 
has mastered any law in his private thoughts, is master to 
that extent of all men whose language he speaks, and of all 
into whose language his own can be translated. The poet, 
in utter solitude remembering his spontaneous thoughts and 
recording them, is found to have recorded that which men 
in crowded cities find true for them also. The orator dis- 
trusts at first the fitness of his frank confessions, his want 
of knowledge of the persons he addresses, until he finds that 
he is the complement of his hearers; — that they drink his 
words because he fulfils for them their own nature; the 
deeper he dives into his privatest, secretest presentiment, 
to his wonder he finds this is the most acceptable, most 
public, and universally true. The people delight in it; the 
better part of every man feels. This is my music; this is my- 
self. 

In self-trust all the virtues are comprehended. Free 
should the scholar be, — free and brave. Free even to 
the definition of freedom, "without any hindrance that 
does not arise out of his own constitution." Brave; for fear 
is a thing which a scholar by his very function puts behind 
him. Fear always springs from ignorance. It is a shame to 



148 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

him if his tranquillity, amid dangerous times, arise from the 
presumption that like children and women his is a protected 
class; or if he seek a temporary peace by the diversion of 
his thoughts from politics or vexed questions, hiding his 
head like an ostrich in the flowering bushes, peeping into 
microscopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whistles to keep 
his courage up. So is the danger a danger still; so is the fear 
worse. Manlike let him turn and face it. Let him look into 
its eye and search its nature, inspect its origin, — see the 
whelping of this lion, — which lies no great way back; he 
will then find in himself a perfect comprehension of its nature 
and extent; he will have made his hands meet on the other 
side, and can henceforth defy it and pass on superior. The 
world is his who can see through its pretension. What deaf- 
ness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you 
behold is there only by sufferance, — by your sufferance. 
See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal 
blow. 

Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. It is a mis- 
chievous notion that we are come late into nature; that the 
world was finished a long time ago. As the world was plastic 
and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to so much of his 
attributes as we bring to it. To ignorance and sin, it is flint. 
They adapt themselves to it as they may; but in proportion 
as a man has any thing in him divine, the firmament flows 
before him and takes his signet and form. Not he is great 
who can alter matter, but he who can alter my state of mind. 
They are the kings of the world who give the color of their 
present thought to all nature and all art, and persuade men 
by the cheerful serenity of their carrying the matter, that 
this thing which they do is the apple which the ages have 
desired to pluck, now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the 
harvest. The great man makes the great thing. Wherever 
Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table. Linnaeus 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 149 

makes botany the most alluring of studies, and wins it from 
the farmer and the herb-woman; Davy, chemistry; and 
Cuvier, fossils. The day is always his who works in it with 
serenity and great aims. The unstable estimates of men 
crowd to him whose mind is filled with a truth, as the heaped 
waves of the Atlantic follow the moon. 

For this self-trust, the reason is deeper than can be 
fathomed, — darker than can be enlightened. I might not 
carry with me the feeling of my audience in stating my own 
belief. But I have already shown the ground of my hope, in 
adverting to the doctrine that man is one. I believe man 
has been wronged; he has wronged himself. He has almost 
lost the light that can lead him back to his prerogatives. 
Men are become of no account. Men in history, men in the 
world of to-day, are bugs, are spawn, and called "the mass" 
and "the herd." In a century, in a millennium, one or two 
men; that is to say, one or two approximations to the right 
state of every man. All the rest behold in the hero or the 
poet their own green and crude being, — ripened; yes, and 
are content to be less, so that may attain to its full stature. 
What a testimony, full of grandeur, full of pity, is borne to 
the demands of his own nature, by the poor clansman, the 
poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of his chief. The poor 
and the low find some amends to their immense moral ca- 
pacity, for their acquiescence in a political and social in- 
feriority. They are content to be brushed like flies from the 
path of a great person, so that justice shall be done by him 
to that common nature which it is the dearest desire of all 
to see enlarged and glorified. They sun themselves in the 
great man's light, and feel it to be their own element. They 
cast the dignity of man from their downtrod selves upon the 
shoulders of a hero, and will perish to add one drop of blood 
to make that great heart beat, those giant sinews combat 
and conquer. He lives for us, and we live in him. 



150 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Men such as they are, very naturally seek money or 
power; and power because it is as good as money, — the 
"spoils," so called, *'of office." And why not? for they 
aspire to the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, they 
dream is highest. Wake them and they shall quit the false 
good and leap to the true, and leave governments to clerks 
and desks. This revolution is to be wrought by the gradual 
domestication of the idea of Culture. The main enterprise 
of the world for splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of a 
man. Here are the materials strewn along the ground. The 
private life of one man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, 
more formidable to its enemy, more sweet and serene in its 
influence to its friend, than any kingdom in history. For a 
man, rightly viewed, comprehendeth the particular natures 
of all men. Each philosopher, each bard, each actor has only 
done for me, as by a delegate, what one day I can do for 
myself. The books which once we valued more than the 
apple of the eye, we have quite exhausted. What is that but 
saying that we have come up with the point of view which 
the universal mind took through the eyes of one scribe; we 
have been that man, and have passed on. First, one, then 
another, we drain all cisterns, and waxing greater by all 
these supplies, we crave a better and more abundant food. 
The man has never lived that can feed us ever. The human 
mind cannot be enshrined in a person who shall set a barrier 
on any one side to this unbounded, unboundable empire. 
It is one central fire, which, flaming now out of the lips of 
Etna, lightens the capes of Sicily, and now out of the throat 
of Vesuvius, illuminates the towers and vineyards of Naples. 
It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one 
soul which animates all men. 

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon this abstraction 
of the Scholar. I ought not to delay longer to add what I 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 151 

have to say of nearer reference to the time and to this 
country. 

Historically, there is thought to be a difference in the 
ideas which predominate over successive epochs, and there 
are data for marking the genius of the Classic, of the Ro- 
mantic, and now of the Reflective or Philosophical age. 
With the views I have intimated of the oneness or the iden- 
tity of the mind through all individuals, I do not much dwell 
on these differences. In fact, I believe each individual passes 
through all three. The boy is a Greek; the youth, roman- 
tic; the adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that a revo- 
lution in the leading idea may be distinctly enough traced. 

Our age is bewailed as the age of Introversion. Must that 
needs be evil? We, it seems, are critical; we are embarrassed 
with second thoughts; we cannot enjoy any thing for hanker- 
ing to know whereof the pleasure consists; we are lined with 
eyes; we see with our feet; the time is infected with Ham- 
let's unhappiness, — 

"Sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought." 

It is so bad then? Sight is the last thing to be pitied. 
Would we be blind? Do we fear lest we should outsee nature 
and God, and drink truth dry? I look upon the discontent 
of the literary class as a mere announcement of the fact that 
they find themselves not in the state of mind of their fathers, 
and regret the coming state as untried; as a boy dreads the 
water before he has learned that he can swim. If there is 
any period one would desire to be born in, is it not the age of 
Revolution; when the old and the new stand side by side 
and admit of being compared; when the energies of all men 
are searched by fear and by hope; when the historic glories 
of the old can be compensated by the rich possibilities of the 
new era? This time, like all times, is a very good one, if we 
but know what to do with it. 



152 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

I read with some joy of the auspicious signs of the 
coming days, as they glimmer already through poetry and 
art, through philosophy and science, through church and 
state. 

One of these signs is the fact that the same movement 
■which affected the elevation of what was called the lowest 
class in the state, assumed in literature a very marked and 
as benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime and beautiful, 
the near, the low, the common, was explored and poetized. 
That which had been negligently trodden under foot by those 
•who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long 
Jjourneys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer 
than all foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the feelings 
of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of 
household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. 
It is a sign, — is it not? of new vigor when the extremities 
are made active, when currents of warm life run into the 
hands and the feet. I ask not for the great, the remote, the 
romantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; what is Greek 
art, or Provengal minstrelsy; I embrace the common, I ex- 
plore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me 
insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and 
future worlds. What would we really know the meaning of? 
The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the 
street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form 
and the gait of the body; — show me the ultimate reason 
of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the high- 
est spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these 
suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle 
bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an 
eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger referred 
to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; — 
and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber- 
room, but has form and order; there is no trifle, there is no 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 153 

puzzle, but one design unites and animates the farthest 
pinnacle and the lowest trench. 

This idea has inspired the genius of Goldsmith, Burns, 
Cowper, and, in a newer time, of Goethe, Wordsworth, and 
Carlyle, This idea they have differently followed and with 
various success. In contrast with their writing, the style of 
Pope, of Johnson, of Gibbon, looks cold and pedantic. This 
writing is blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that things 
near are not less beautiful and wondrous than things remote. 
The near explains the far. The drop is a small ocean. A 
man is related to all nature. This perception of the worth 
of the vulgar is fruitful in discoveries. Goethe, in this very 
thing the most modern of the moderns, has shown us, as 
none ever did, the genius of the ancients. 

There is one man of genius who has done much for this 
philosophy of life, whose literary value has never yet been 
rightly estimated; — I mean Emanuel Swedenborg. The 
most imaginative of men, yet writing with the precision of 
a mathematician, he endeavored to engraft a purely philo- 
sophical Ethics on the popular Christianity of his time. Such 
an attempt of course must have diflSculty which no genius 
could surmount. But he saw and showed the connection 
between nature and the affections of the soul. He pierced 
the emblematic or spiritual character of the visible, audible, 
tangible world. Especially did his shade-loving muse hover 
over and interpret the lower parts of nature; he showed the 
mysterious bond that allies moral evil to the foul material 
forms, and has given in epical parables a theory of insanity, 
of beasts, of unclean and fearful things. 

Another sign of our times, also marked by an analogous 
political movement, is the new importance given to the 
single person. Every thing that tends to insulate the indi- 
vidual, — to surround him with barriers of natural respect, 
so that each man shall feel the world is his, and man shall 



154 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state, 
— tends to true union as well as greatness. "I learned," 
said the melancholy Pestalozzi, "that no man in God's 
wide earth is either willing or able to help any other man." 
Help must come from the bosom alone. The scholar is that 
man who must take up into himself all the ability of the 
time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of the 
future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there 
be one lesson more than another which should pierce his ear, 
it is, The world is nothing, the man is all ; in yourself is the 
law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap 
ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for 
you to know all; it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and 
Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man 
belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, 
to the American Scholar. We have listened too long to the 
courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American free- 
man is already suspected to be timid, imitative, tame. Pub- 
lic and private avarice make the air we breathe thick and 
fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, complaisant. See al- 
ready the tragic consequence. The mind of this country, 
taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There is no 
work for any but the decorous and the complaisant. Young 
men of the fairest promise, who begin life upon our shores, 
inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon by all the stars 
of God, find the earth below not in unison with these, but are 
hindered from action by the disgust which the principles on 
which business is managed inspire, and turn drudges, or die 
of disgust, some of them suicides. What is the remedy? 
They did not yet see, and thousands of young men as hope- 
ful now crowding to the barriers for the career do not yet 
see, that if the single man plant himself indomitably on his 
instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round 
to him. Patience, — patience; with the shades of all the 



THE AMERICAN SCHOLAR 155 

good and great for company; and for solace the perspective 
of your own infinite life; and for work the study and the 
communication of principles, the making those instincts 
prevalent, the conversion of the world. Is it not the chief 
disgrace in the world, not to be an unit; — not to be reck- 
oned one character; — not to yield that peculiar fruit which 
each man was created to bear, but to be reckoned in the 
gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of the party, the 
section, to which we belong; and our opinion predicted 
geographically, as the north, or the south? Not so, brothers 
and friends, — please God, ours shall not be so. We will 
walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we 
will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall be no 
longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indul- 
gence. The dread of man and the love of man shall be a wall 
of defence and a wreath of joy around all. A nation of men 
will for the first time exist, because each believes himself in- 
spired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men. 



DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION i 

PHILANDER P. CLAXTON 

A STUDY of the chapters of the portion of the report sub- 
mitted herewith and of certain other chapters which were 
not ready in time to be included in this report shows that 
within the year there has been in this country an increase in 
tendency toward democracy in education, toward giving to 
every child of whatever condition a full and equal oppor- 
tunity with all other children for that degree and kind of 
education, that quantity and quality of education, which 
will develop in the fullest measure its manhood or woman- 
hood, its human qualities, prepare it for the duties and re- 
sponsibilities of democratic citizenship, for participation in 
civic and social life, and for making an honest living, con- 
tributing its part to the Commonwealth, and serving hu- 
manity by some useful occupation, followed intelligently 
and skillfully with good-will and strong purpose. In a larger 
degree than ever before are we beginning to understand that, 
next to the right to live, this is the most important right of 
every child. If democracy has any valuable and ultimate 
meaning it is equality of opportunity. But there can be no 
equality of opportunity without equality of opportunity in 
education. If to any child this is denied and it is permitted 
to grow to manhood or womanhood without that education 
which prepares it for good living, for the duties and respon- 
sibilities of citizenship, and for making an honest living by 
some intelligent, useful occupation, then there is nothing 

1 From the Report of the United States Commissioner of Education 
(1915), vol. I, p. xvi. 



DEMOCRACY IN EDUCATION 157 

which individual or society can do, nothing which man or 
God can do, to make good the loss. More than ever before 
are we beginning to understand that material progress, 
social purity, civic righteousness, political stability and 
strength, and the possibilities of culture and the attain- 
ment of higher ideals, all depend on the right education of 
all the people. If any man or woman follows his or her 
trade or profession with less intelligence and skill than he or 
she might, the total amount of wealth produced is less than 
it might be. If any lack knowledge of fundamental prin- 
ciples of government and institutional life necessary for in- 
telligent citizenship in our democracy, the civic and political 
life of city, State, and Nation is affected thereby. If the 
health, the culture, or the moral education of any has been 
neglected, all society and each of its members must suffer as 
a result. If any, through wrong education or the inculcation 
of false ideals, work at occupations for which they are not 
fitted or in which they may not serve themselves and so- 
ciety as well as they might in other ways, their own lives 
and the lives of us all are less full and satisfactory than they 
might otherwise be. We are bound up in the sheaf of life 
together, and our interests from the lowest to the highest 
and from the highest to the lowest are inextricably inter- 
woven. Therefore the liberal use of public funds for the sup- 
port of schools and other agencies of education is more and 
more clearly recognized as good business, and careful think- 
ing and planning for the fullest and best education of all the 
children of all the people as the highest duty of citizenship. 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? i 
EDWIN A. ALDERMAN 

The United States of America is one of the oldest Gov- 
ernments on earth. England »«4-fttissia alone, among the 
nations of Em-ope, equal it in age, and even England has 
undergone such radical changes in the past century, as com- 
pared with the United States, as to constitute us, with our 
unchanged Government since 1789, the most stable of 
modern nations. Our nearness to the perspective and our 
absorption in our own life have blinded us to the inspiring 
National panorama, as it has unfolded itself before the world. 
First, a group of rustic communities, making common cause 
in behalf of ancient guarantees of English freedom; then sus- 
picious colonies, unused to the ways of democracies, striv- 
ing after some bond amid the clash of jealous interests; then 
a wonderful paper-writing, compact of high sense and hu- 
man foresight and tragic compromise; then a young Re- 
public, lacking the instinct of unity, but virile, unlovely, 
raw, wayward, in its confident young strength .v Some con- 
fused decades of sad, earnest effort to pluck out an evil 
growth planted in its life by the hard necessities of compro- 
mise by the fathers, but which needs must blossom into the 
flower of civil war before it could be plucked out and thrown 
to the void. Then young manhood, nursing its youth, whole 
and undivisible, proven by trial of fire and dark days, open- 
ing its eye upon a new world of steam and force, and seizing 

* Spoken before the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society, No- 
vember 9, 1915, by the president of the University of Virjjinia. Reprinted 
from the Proceedings of the Society with the generous permission of the 
author. 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 159 

greedily and selfishly every coign of vantage; and to-day 
the most venerable Republic, the richest of nations, the 
champion and exemplar of World Democracy. 

No nation, I venture to assert, was ever born grounded on 
so definite and fixed a principle and with so conscious a pur- 
pose. Such a wealth of hope for humanity never before 
gathered about a mere political experiment, and such a mass 
of pure idealism never before suffused itself into the frame- 
work of a State. How can such a Nation so begun, so ad- 
vanced, so beset, be so guided, that all of its citizens shall 
indeed become free men, entering continually into the pos- 
session of intellectual, material, and moral benefits? How 
can a people devoted to individualism and freedom retain 
that individualism which guarantees freedom and yet en- 
graft upon their social order that genius for cooperation 
which alone insures power and progress? These are the 
final interrogatories of democracy as a sane vision glimpses 
it, robbed of its earlier illusions. The fathers of this Re- 
public did not understand the present mould of democracy. 
The very word was obnoxious to them. Their ideal was a 
State the citizens of which chose their leaders and then 
trusted them. They did not foresee the socialized State. 
They did not envisage a minute and paternal organization of 
society which may be achieved alike by Prussian absolut- 
ism or mere socialism, which is chronologically, if not logi- 
cally, the child of democracy. The fear that tugged at their 
hearts was the fear of tyranny, the dread of kings, the denial 
of self-direction, which prevented a man from speaking his 
opinion or going his way as he willed. Their democracy was 
a working government which should give effect to the will 
of the people and at the same time provide sufficient safe- 
guard for individual liberty. The emphasis of the time was 
everywhere upon the rights of the individual rather more 
than upon the duties of the citizen. When their theories, as 



160 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

Mr. Hadley points out, seemed likely to secure this result, 
the fathers published them boldly; when they seemed likely 
to interfere, they ignored them. The creed, then, which had 
a religious sanction in an age of moral imagination to men 
of superb human enthusiasm like Washington, Franklin, 
Jefferson, and Adams, was the belief that democracy, con- 
sidered as individual freedom, was the final form of human 
society. It is idle to deny that a century of trial has some- 
what dulled the halo about this ancient concept of democ- 
racy, but in my judgment only to men of little faith. It is 
quite true that our democracy of to-day is not what Rous- 
seau thought it would be, nor Lord Byron, nor Shelley, nor 
Karl Marx. But as we meditate about it and conclude that 
it has not realized all of its hopes, we ought to try to settle 
first what it has done and then place that to its credit. Here 
are some things that I think democracy has done, or helped 
to do. It has abated sectarian fury. Sectarian fury is ridic- 
ulous in this age; it was not always so. It has abolished 
slavery. It has protected and enlarged manhood suffrage 
and has gone far toward womanhood suffrage. It has miti- 
gated much social injustice. It has developed a touching 
and almost sublime faith in the power of education, illus- 
trating it by expending six hundred million dollars a year in 
the most daring thing that democracy has ever tried to do; 
namely, to fit for citizenship every human being born within 
its borders. It has increased kindness and gentleness, and 
thus diminished the fury of partisanship. It has preserved 
the form of the Union through the storm of a civil war, and 
yet has had power to touch with healing unity and forgive- 
ness its passions and tragedies. It has conquered and civilized 
a vast continent. It has developed great agencies of culture 
and has somehow made itself a symbol of individual pros- 
perity. It has developed a common consciousness and a vol- 
unteer statesmanship among its free citizens as manifested 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 161 

more strikingly than elsewhere in the world in great edu- 
cational, religious, scientific and philanthropic societies, 
which profoundly influence and mould society. Out of 
what other State could have issued as a volunteer move- 
ment so eflScient an agency as the Commission for the Relief 
of Belgium or the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission? It 
has permitted and fostered the growth of a public press of 
gigantic power reflecting the crudities and impulses of a 
vast and varied population, but charged with a fierce ideal- 
ism and staunch patriotism that have almost given it a place 
among the coordinate branches of our organized Govern- 
ment. It has stimulated inventive genius and business en- 
terprise to a point never before reached in human annals. 
It has brought to American-mindedness millions of men of 
all races, creeds and ideals. I do not, therefore, think that 
democracy as it has evolved among us has failed. What au- 
tocracy on earth has done as much? It has justified itself of 
the sufferings and sacrifices and the dreams of the men who 
established it in this new land. But it has also without 
doubt, by the very trust that it places in men, developed 
new shapes of temptations and wrong-doing. Democracy, 
like a man's character, is never clear out of danger. The 
moral life of men, said Froude, is like the flight of a bird in 
the air; he is sustained only by effort, and when he ceases to 
exert himself he falls. And the same, it seems to me, is im- 
pressively true of institutional and governmental life. 

Patriotism — which is hard to define and new with every 
age — and public spirit — which is hard to define and new 
with every age — must constantly redefine themselves. Pa- 
triotism meant manhood's rights when Washington took it to 
his heart. It somehow spelled culture, refinement and dis- 
tincTtion of mind when Emerson in his Phi Beta Kappa ad- 
dress besought the sluggish intellect of his country to look up 
from under its iron lids. It signified National ideals and 



162 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

theories of government to the soldiers of Lee and to the 
soldiers of Grant. It meant industrial greatness and a 
splendid desire to annex nature to man's uses when the 
great business leaders of this generation and of the last gen- 
eration built up their great businesses and tied the Union 
together in a unity of steel and steam more completely than 
all the wars could do, and did it with a patriotism and a 
statesmanship and an imagination that no man can deny. 
The honest business man needs somebody to praise him. He 
has done a great service in this country, and when he is 
steady and honest there is no greater force in all our life. A 
decade ago patriotism in America meant a reaction from an 
unsocial and selfish individualism to restraint and consid- 
eration for the general welfare, expressing itself in a cry for 
moderation and fairness and justice and sympathy in the 
use of power and wealth as the states of spirit and mind 
that alone can safeguard republican ideals. The emphasis, 
as I have said, was formerly on the rights of man; it is get- 
ting to be placed, as Mazzini preached, upon the duties of 
man. If in our youth and feverish strength there had grown 
up a spirit of avarice and a desire for quick wealth, and 
a theory of life in lesser minds that estimated money as 
everything and was willing to do anything for money, that 
very fact served to define the patriotic duty and mood of the 
National mind. This reawakened patriotism of the com- 
mon good had the advantage of appeal to a sound public 
conscience, and of being supported by a valid public opinion. 
The part that vulgar cunning has played in creating great 
fortunes has been made known to this democracy and they 
are coming to know the genuine from the spurious, and some 
who were once looked at with admiration and approval as 
great ones, are not now seen in that light. 

This very growth in discernment gave us power to see in a 
nobler and truer light, for the people of America, the names 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 163 

of those upright souls in business and in poHtfcs — and 
there are many noble men in business and politics — who 
have held true in a heady time and who have kept clean and 
kept human their public sympathies and their republican 
ideals and by so doing have kept sweet their country's fame. 
Democracy simply had met and outfaced one of the million 
moral crises that are likely to assail free government, and I 
believe that it is cleaner to-day in ruling passion, in motive, 
and in practice than it has been in jBlty years. 

It is now clear to all minds that the movement of our busi- 
ness operations in this Republic, unregulated and proceed- 
ing along individualistic lines, had come perilously near to 
developing a scheme of monopoly and a union of our polit- 
ical machinery with the forces of private gain that might 
easily have transformed our democracy into some ugly form 
of tyranny and injustice. We have halted this tendency 
somewhat tardily, but resolutely, and the nerves of the 
Nation were somewhat shaken by the very thought of what 
might have been, very much as a man gazes with gratitude 
and yet with fear upon a hidden precipice over which his 
pathway led. We had been saying over and over to ourselves 
with fierce determination that this Nation should remain 
democratic, and should not become plutocratic or auto- 
cratic or socialistic; and we should find the way to guarantee 
this. All about us were heard the voices of those who thought 
they saw the way and who were beckoning men to follow, 
but new dangers faced us, however, even as we left the an- 
cient highway and attempted to cut new paths, for in en- 
deavoring to make it possible for democracy, as we under- 
stood it, and a vast industrialism, as we had developed it, to 
live together justly under the same political roof, we had 
plainly come to a point where there was danger of our Gov- 
ernment developing into a system of State socialism in con- 
flict with our deepest traditions and convictions. The lead- 



164 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

ership of the future, therefore, would have a triple problem 
-■ — to protect the people against privilege, to raise the levels 
of democratic living, and to preserve for the people the an- 
cient guarantees and inestimable advantages of representa- 
tive government and individual initiative. 

You will observe that I have thus far spoken as a citizen 
preoccupied with the thoughts of that ancient world which 
ended on August 1, 1914, and I have not permitted myself 
to align and examine in full the perils and weaknesses of 
democratic society as they had manifested themselves under 
conditions of peace and apparent prosperity. These weak- 
nesses had already begun, under the strain of ordinary indus- 
trial life, to reveal themselves under five general aspects, each 
aspect being in essence a sort of revulsion or excess of feel- 
ing from what were considered definite political virtues : — • 

1. A contempt of obedience as a virtue too closely allied 
to servility. 

2. A disregard of discipline as smacking too much of 
docility. 

3. An impatience with trained technical skill as seeming 
to affirm that one man is not as good as another. 

4. A failure to understand the value of the common man 
as a moral and political asset and an inability to coordinate 
education to daily life as a means of forwarding national 
ends and ideals. 

5. A crass individualism which exalted self and its rights 
above society and the solemn social obligation to cooperate 
for the common good. 

The theory of democracy which alone among great human 
movements had known no setback for a century of time, was 
fast becoming self-critical and disposed to self -analysis, and 
especially in America these fundamental weaknesses were 
being assailed in practical forms. The liberal or progressive 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 165 

movement in our politics was striking at the theory of crass 
individuaUsm, and after the unbalanced fashion of social re- 
form was moving toward pure democracy of State socialism 
in the interest of communal welfare. Our old, original, in- 
tense American individualism, shamed by its ill-governed 
cities and lack of concern for popular welfare, had passed 
forever. Socialism, considered as a paternal form of govern- 
ment, exercising strict regulation over men's lives and de- 
stroying individual energy and initiative, was still feared 
and resisted; but the social goal of democracy was becom- 
ing even by the most conservative, to be considered the ad- 
vancement and improvement of society by a protection of 
life and health, by a reformation of educational methods and 
by a large amount of governmental control of fundamentals 
for the common good. A multitude of laws, ranging from 
laws governing milk for babies, to public parks and free dis- 
pensaries and vast corporations, attested the vigor of this 
new attitude. And strange to say this new spirit was not 
wholly self -begotten. Plutocracy, with its common sense, 
its economies and hatred of waste, its organization and its 
energy, had taught us much. We, too, had caught a spirit 
from what we used to call effete Europe. Australia taught 
us how to vote; Belgium, Germany, and England that there 
was a democracy adapted to city and factory as well as to 
the farm and country-side. 

The forces of education were pleading the cause of team 
work in modern life, scientifically directed, not by amateurs 
and demagogues, but by experts and scientists, whether in 
city government or public hygiene or scientific land cul- 
ture, while seriousness and self-restraint were everywhere 
the themes of public teachers, pleading for order and organ- 
ization as an ideal of public welfare, nearly as vital as liberty 
and self -direction. And then, without warning, fell out this 
great upheaval of the world, so vast, so fundamental, despite 



166 ^AMERlCAN DEMOCRACY 

its sordid and stupid beginnings, that the dullest among us 
must dimly realize that a new epoch has registered itself in 
human affairs. War is a great pitiless flame. It sweeps its 
fiery torch along the ways of men, destroying but renovating, 
killing but quickening, and even amid its horrors of cor- 
ruption "and death leaving white ashes cleanly and fertile. 
War is also a ghastly mirror in which actualities and ideals 
and tendencies reflect themselves in awful vividness. W^ho 
caused this war, who will be aggrandized by this war — its 
triumphs and humiliations — are important and moving, 
but not vital questions. The fundamental question is what 
effect will its reactions have upon that movement of the 
human spirit called democracy, begun so simply, advanced 
so steadfastly, yesterday acclaimed as the highest develop- 
ment of human polity, but to-day already being sneered at 
and snarled at by a host of enemies. Will war, the harshest 
of human facts, destroy, weaken, modify, or strengthen es- 
sential democracy ? It is my conviction that the Allies in this 
struggle are fighting for democracy — at least for the brand 
of democracy with which my spirit is familiar and which my 
soul has learned to love. Once more in the great human 
story, the choice is being made between contrasting civiliza- 
tions, between ideals and institutions, between liberty and the 
lesser life. Every drop of my blood leaps to sympathy with' 
those peoples who, heedless of inexorable eflSciency, dream 
a mightier dream of an order directed by justice, invigorated 
by freedom, instinct with the higher happiness of individual 
liberty, self -directed to reason and cooperation. "For what 
avail the plough or sail, or land or life if freedom fail? " The 
very weaknesses of democratic government under the cru- 
cial test of war appeal to me. The tutelage of democracy 
breeds love of justice, the methods of persuasion and debate, 
and a conception of life which makes it sweet to live and in 
a way destroys the temperament for war, until horror and 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 167 

wrong and reversion to type create anew the savage im- 
pulse. Whatever way victory falls, democracy is destined 
to stand its trial, and to be submitted to a merciless cross- 
examination by the mind and spirit of man. It may and 
will yield up some of its aspirations; it will seize and adapt 
some of the weapons of its foes; it may relinquish some of its 
ancient theories and methods; it will shed some of its ham- 
pering weaknesses; but it will still remain democracy, and 
it is the king, the autocrat, and the mechanical State which 
will suffer in the end rather than the common man who, in 
sublime loyalty to race and flag, is now reddening the soil of 
Europe with his blood, or the great principle which has 
fascinated every generous thinking soul since freedom be- 
came the heritage of man. 

The Germans are a mighty race, fecund in physical force 
and organizing genius. Like the French of 1789, they are 
now more possessed with a group of passionate creative im- 
pulses than any other nation. This grandiose idealism, for 
such it is, seems to me reactionary, but it is held with a sort 
of thrilling devotion and executed with undoubted genius. 
Nineteen hundred and fourteen is for the Prussians a sort of 
Prussian Elizabethan age, in which vast dreams and ideas 
glow in the hearts and minds of Teutonic Raleighs, Drakes, 
and Grenvilles, ready to die for them. 'The ideal of organiza- 
tion, the thought of a great whole uniting its members for 
effective work in building a powerful State, and the welding 
of a monstrous federal union of nations akin in interests and 
civilizations possess the Germanic mind. For the German 
the individual exists for the State, and his concept of the 
State is far more beautiful and spiritual than we Americans 
generally imagine. The State is to be the resultant of the 
best thought and efforts of all its units. They have a glorious 
concept of communal welfare, but to them parliamentarism 
is frankly a disease and suffrage a menace. To them, and 



168 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

I am quoting a notable German scholar, "democracy is 
a thing, infirm of pm-pose, jealous, timid, changeable, un- 
thorough, without foresight, blundering along in an age of 
lucidity guided by confused instincts.*' On the whole Ger- 
many is probably better governed in external forms than the 
United States or England. The material conditions of her 
people are better, her cities cleaner, her economies finer, 
her social life better administered, and her power to achieve 
amazing results under the fiercest of tests nearly marvelous. 
The world cannot and probably will not reject as vile all this 
German scholarship, concentration, and scientific power. 
The world may either slavishly imitate Germany, or wisely 
modify or set up a contrary system overtopping the German 
ideal in definite accomplishment, according to the inclina- 
tion of the scales of victory. The fatality of the German 
Nation is that it does not behold the world as it is. It beholds 
its ideals and is logic-driven to their achievement. It has 
gone from the sand wastes of Brandenburg to world-power 
by force and the will to do, and by force and will it seeks its 
will and hacks its way through. It is enslaved by the majesty 
of plan and precision — the power of concert. Napoleon, 
"that ablest of historic men," as Lord Acton called him, 
tried all this once and failed. But here it all is again, with 
its weapons of flame and force. Germany, apparently, does 
not understand the fair doctrine of live and let live. Pride 
sustains its soul, and ambition directs its energy. In spite of 
all these concrete achievements Germany does not seem to 
me a progressive nation, but rather a Giant of Reaction — a 
sort of mixture, as some one has called it, of Ancient Sparta 
and Modern Science. And it is well to hold in mind that this 
mass-efficiency is brought to pass by subjecting even in the 
minutest particulars the individual to the supreme authority 
of the State. This subjection is scientific, well-meant, but 
very minute. 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 169 

The flaw of democracy is that it does understand and 
sympathize with the soul of man, but is so sympathetic with 
his yearning for free self-government and self-direction, so 
opposed to force as a moulding agent, so jealous of initiative, 
that it has not yet found the binding thread of social organi- 
zation by which self-government and good government be- 
come one and the same thing. Let us confess that ^'Les 
moeurs de la liberie " cannot be the manners of absolutism. 
Debate, political agitation, bold, popular expression, are 
not the methods of smooth precision and relentless order. 
Napoleon revealed to the world the democratic passion and 
passed off the stage. Perhaps it is the destiny of the Prus- 
sian to teach us administration and order and to put us in 
the way of finding and achieving it without sacrificing our 
liberties, and then he, too, will pass. 

To work out a free democratic, socialized life, wherein 
the individual is not lost in a metaphysical super-State, nor 
sunk in inaction and selfishness, by inducing desire for such 
life, by applying trained intelligence to its achievement, and 
by subjecting ourselves to the tests and disciplines that will 
bring it to pass — that is the task of American democracy 
and indeed of a fuller, deeper world-wide democracy. The 
center of gravity of the autocratic State is in the State it- 
self, and in such ideals as self-anointed leaders suggest. 
The effect of the democracy has been to shift the center of 
gravity too much to the individual self and his immediate 
welfare. 

There must be a golden mean somewhere and we must 
find it. When the great readjustment dawns, when the 
gaping wounds of war have healed, all the world will be seek- 
ing this golden mean. The social democrat of Germany, 
who is silent now in his splendid National devotion, will be 
seeking it; the Russian peasant, inarticulate, mystic, re- 
flective; the Frenchman with his clear brain and forward- 



170 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

looking soul; the Englishman wrapped in his great tradition. 
Perhaps in our untouched and undreamed vigor, we shall 
become the champions of the great quest. 

There would be fitness in such a result. Here continental 
democracy was born; here it has grown great upon an in- 
comparable soil and with enormous waste. Let us prepare 
for our colossal moral and practical responsibilities in the 
world life, therefore, not alone by preparing common sense 
establishments of force on land and sea, until such time 
as human reason shall deem them not needed, but by the 
greater preparedness of self-restraint, self -analysis, and self- 
discipline. Let us not surrender our age-long dream of good, 
just self-government to any mechanical ideal of quickly ob- 
taining material results erected into a crude dogma of effi- 
ciency. Democracy must know how to get material results 
economically and quickly. Democracy must and can be 
organized to that end, and this organization will undoubt- 
edly involve certain surrenders, certain social and politi- 
cal self-abnegations in the interests of collectivism. But 
I hold the faith that all this can be done yet, retaining 
in the family of freedom that shining jewel of individual 
liberty which has glowed in our life since the beginning. 
The great democratic nations — America, England, France, 
Switzerland — have before them, therefore, the problem of 
retaining their standards of individual liberty, and yet con- 
triving juster and finer administrative organs. Certainly 
the people that have built this Union can learn how to 
coordinate the activities of its people and obtain results as 
definite as those obtained under systems of mere authority. 

Since my college days I have been hearing about and ad- 
miring the German genius for research, for adaptation of 
scientific truth and for organization. Now the whole world 
stands half astonished and half envious of their creed of 
efficiency. In so far as this creed is opposed to slipshodness 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 171 

and waste, it is altogether good, but the question arises. Is 
the abihty to get things done well deadly to liberty, or is 
it consistent with personal liberty? In examining German 
progress, I do not find as many examples of supreme individ- 
ual efficiency or independent spirit as I find in the demo- 
cratic nations. The steam engine, the factory system, tele- 
graph, telephone, wireless, electric light, the gasoline engine, 
aeroplane, machine gun, the submarine, uses of rubber, 
dreadnaught, the mighty names of Lister and Pasteur, come 
out of the democratic nations. The distinctive German gen- 
ius is for administration and adaptation, rather than for 
independent creation. His civil service is the finest in the 
world. He knows what he wants. He decides what training 
is necessary to get that result. He universalizes that training. 
He enforces obedience to its discipline. A man must have 
skill; he must obey; he must work; he must cooperate. The 
freer nations desire the same results, but neglect to enforce 
their realization. Their theory of government forces them 
to plead for its attainment. Certain classes and individuals 
heed this persuasion, and in an atmosphere of precious free- 
dom great personalities spring into being. In the conflict 
between achievement based on subjection and splendid 
obedience, and that based on political freedom, my belief is 
that the system of political and social freedom will trium- 
phantly endure. In essence, it is the conflict between the effi- 
ciency of adaptation and organization and the efficiency of 
invention and creation. What autocracy needs is the thrill 
and push of individual liberty, and the continental peasant 
will get it as the result of this war, for the guns of autocracy 
are celebrating the downfall of autocracy, even in its most 
ancient fastness — Russia. These autocracies will realize 
their real greatness when they substitute humility for pride, 
freedom for accomplishment, as compelling national mo- 
tives. Wliat democracy needs is the discipline of patient 



172 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

labor, of trained skill, of thoroughness in work, and a more 
socialized conception of public duty. As President Eliot has 
pointed out, the German theory of social organization is 
very young, and her literature, philosophy, and art are fairly 
new. It is a bit premature to concede the supreme validity 
of her Kultur and of her political organization until she can 
point to such names as Dante and Angelo, Shakespeare and 
Milton, Newton and Darwin and Pasteur, and until such 
names appear in her political history as Washington and 
Jefferson and Burke. This is not meant to deny the sur- 
passing greatness of her music and her philosophy, nor to 
minimize the glory of her Goethes or Schillers or Lessings or 
Steins, but to suggest that she has not yet reached the super- 
lative. It is not yet quite sure that with all their genius for 
organization and eflSciency, they may not be self-directed to 
ruin. Certainly the German has as much to learn from the 
freer nations as we have to learn from the Teutonic genius. 
Switzerland has organized her democracy and kept her per- 
sonal liberty, and there is no finer spectacle on earth to- 
day than the spectacle of France, seed-sowing, torch-bearing 
France; France, that has touched the heights and sounded 
the depths of human experience and national tragedy; "Xa 
belle Francey* that has substituted duty for glory as a na- 
tional motive, and has kept her soul free in the valley of 
humiliation; grim, patient, silent, far-seeing France, clinging 
to her republican ideals and reorganizing her life from hovel 
to palace in the very impact of conflict and death, so that it 
is enabled to present to the world the finest example of or- 
ganized eflSciency and military glory that the world has seen 
in some generations. In order to organize an autocracy, the 
rulers ordain that it shall get in order and provide the means 
to bring about that end. To organize a democracy, we must 
organize its soul, and give it power to create its own ideals. 
It is primarily a peace organization, and that is proof that 



CAN DEMOCRACY BE ORGANIZED? 173 

it is the forward movement of the human soul and not the 
movement of scientific reaction. It is through a severe men- 
tal training in our schools and a return to the conception 
of public duty which guided the sword and uplifted the heart 
of the Founder of the Republic that we shall find strength 
to organize the democracy of the future, revolutionized by 
science and by urban life. The right to vote implies the duty 
to vote right; the right to legislate, the duty to legislate 
justly; the right to judge about foreign policy, the duty to 
fight if necessary; the right to come to college, the duty to 
carry one's seK handsomely at college. Our youth must be 
taught to use their senses, to reason simply and correctly, 
from exact knowledge thus brought to them to attain to 
sincerity in thought and judgment through work and pa- 
tience. In our home and civic life, we need some moral equiv- 
alent for the training which somehow issues out of war — the 
glory of self-sacrifice, obedience to just authority, contempt 
of ease, and a realization that through thoughtful, collective 
effort great results will be obtained. A great spiritual glory 
will come to these European nations through their sorrow 
and striving, which will express itself in great poems and 
great literature. They are preparing new shrines at which 
mankind will worship. Let us take care that prosperity is 
not our sole national endowment. War asks of men self- 
denials and sacrifice for ideals. Peace must somehow do the 
same. Autocracy orders men to forget self for an over-self 
called the State. Democracy must inspire men to forget self 
for a still higher thing called Humanity. 

There stands upon the steps of the Sub-Treasury build- 
ing, in Wall Street, the bronze figure of an old Virginia 
country gentleman looking out w^ith his honest eyes upon 
that sea of hurrying, gain-getting men. This statue is a 
remarkable allegory, for in his grave, thoughtful person, 
Washington embodies that form of public spirit, that bal- 



174 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

ance of character, that union of force and justice that re- 
defines democracy. Out of his Kps seems to issue the great 
creed which is the core of democratic society, and around 
which this finer organization shall be solidly built. Power 
rests on fitness to rule. Fitness to rule rests on trained minds 
and spirits. You can trust men if you w411 train them. The 
object of power is the public good. The ultimate judgment 
of mankind in the mass is a fairly good judgment. 



CONSCRIPTION PROCLAIVIATION i 

WOODROW WILSON 

Whereas Congress has enacted and the President has, 
on the eighteenth day of May, one thousand nine hundred 
and seventeen, approved a law which contains the following 
provisions : — 

Section 5. That all male persons between the ages of twenty-one 
and thirty, both inclusive, shall be subject to registration in ac- 
cordance with regulations to be prescribed by the President, etc. 

Now, therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, President of the 
United States, do call upon the governor of each of the sev- 
eral States and Territories, the Board of Commissioners of 
the District of Columbia, and all officers and agents of the 
several States and Territories, of the District of Columbia, 
and of the counties and municipalities therein, to perform 
certain duties in the execution of the foregoing law, which 
duties will be communicated to them directly in regulations 
of even date herewith. . . . 

The power against which we are arrayed has sought to 
impose its will upon the world by force. To this end it has 
increased armament until it has changed the face of war. In 
the sense in which we have been wont to think of armies there 
are no armies in this struggle. There are entire nations 
armed. Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man 
the factories are no less a part of the army that is France 
than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. 

* " Done at the city of Washington, this eighteenth day of May, in the year 
of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and seventeen and of the independ- 
ence of the United States of America, the one hundred and forty-first." 



176 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it 
is a nation. To this end our people must draw close in one 
compact front against a common foe. But this cannot be if 
each man pursues a private purpose. All must pursue one 
purpose. The nation needs all men; but it needs each man, 
not in the field that will most pleasure him, but in the en- 
deavor that will best serve the common good. Thus, though 
a sharpshooter pleases to operate a trip-hammer for the 
forging of great guns, and an expert machinist desires to 
march with the flag, the Nation is being served only when 
the sharpshooter marches and the machinist remains at his 
levers. The whole Nation must be a team in which each 
man shall play the part for which he is best fitted. To this 
end. Congress has provided that the Nation shall be organ- 
ized for war by selection and that each man shall be classi- 
fied for service in the place to which it shall best serve the 
general good to call him. 

The significance of this cannot be overstated. It is a new 
thing in our history and a landmark in our progress. It is a 
new manner of accepting and vitalizing our duty to give 
ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the common purpose 
of us all. It is in no sense a conscription of the unwilling; it 
is, rather, selection from a nation which has volunteered in 
mass. It is no more a choosing of those who shall march 
with the colors than it is a selection of those who shall serve 
an equally necessary and devoted purpose in the industries 
that lie behind the battle line. 

The day here named is the time upon which all shall pre- 
sent themselves for assignment to their tasks. It is for that 
reason destined to be remembered as one of the most con- 
spicuous moments in our history. It is nothing less than the 
day upon which the manhood of the country shall step forward 
in one solid rank in defense of the ideals to which this Nation 
is consecrated. It is important to those ideals no less than 



CONSCRIPTION PROCLAMATION 177 

to the pride of this generation in manifesting its devotion to 
them, that there be no gaps in the ranks. 

It is essential that the day be approached in thoughtful 
apprehension of its significance and that we accord to it the 
honor and the meaning that it deserves. Our industrial need 
prescribes that it be not made a technical holiday, but the 
stern sacrifice that is before us urges that it be carried in all 
our hearts as a great day of patriotic devotion and obliga- 
tion when the duty shall lie upon every man, whether he is 
himself to be registered or not, to see to it that the name of 
every male person of the designated ages is written on these 
lists of honor. 



AMERICANISM AND THE FOREIGN-BORN i 
WCX)DROW WILSON 

It warms my heart that you should give me such a re- 
ception, but it is not of myself that I wish to think to-night, 
but of those who have just become citizens of the United 
States. This is the only country in the world which experi- 
ences this constant and repeated rebirth. Other countries 
depend upon the multiplication of their own native people. 
This country is constantly drinking strength out of new 
sources by the voluntary association with it of great bodies 
of strong men and forward-looking women. And so by the 
gift of the free will of independent people it is constantly 
being renewed from generation to generation by the same 
process by which it was originally created. It is as if hu- 
manity had determined to see to it that this great nation, 
founded for the benefit of humanity, should not lack for the 
allegiance of the people of the world. 

You have just taken an oath of allegiance to the United 
States. Of allegiance to whom? Of allegiance to no one, un- 
less it be God. Certainly not of allegiance to those who tem- 
porarily represent this great Government. You have taken an 
oath of allegiance to a great ideal, to a great body of prin- 
ciples, to a great hope of the human race. You have said, 
"We are going to America," not only to earn a living, not 
only to seek the things which it was more difficult to obtain 
where you were born, but to help forward the great enter- 
prises of the human spirit — to let man know that every- 

* Delivered May 10, 1915, in Philadelphia, before an audience of natu- 
ralized Americans. 



AMERICANISM AND THE FOREIGN-BORN 179 

where in the world there are men who will cross strange 
oceans and go where a speech is spoken which is alien to 
them, knowing that, whatever the speech, there is but one 
longing and utterance of the human heart, and that is for 
liberty and justice. 

And while you bring all countries with you, you come with 
a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you — bring- 
ing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your 
shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to 
leave in them. I certainly would not be one even to suggest 
that a man ceases to love the home of his birth and the na- 
tion of his origin — these things are very sacred and ought 
not to be put out of our hearts — but it is one thing to love 
the place where you were born and it is another thing to 
dedicate yourself to the place to which you go. You cannot 
dedicate yourself to America unless you become in every 
respect and with every purpose of your will thorough Ameri- 
cans. You cannot become thorough Americans if you think 
of yourselves in groups. America does not consist of groups. 
A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular 
national group in America, has not yet become an Ameri- 
can, and the man who goes among you to trade upon your 
nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and 
Stripes. 

My urgent advice to you would be not only always to think 
first of America, but always, also, to think first of humanity. 
You do not love humanity if you seek to divide humanity 
into jealous camps. Humanity can be welded together only 
by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and ha- 
tred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal 
capital out of the passions of his fellow men. He has lost the 
touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite 
mankind by those passions which lift and not by the pas- 
sions which separate and debase. 



180 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

We came to America, either om-selves or in the persons of 
our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, to make them see 
finer things than they had seen before, to get rid of things 
that divide, and to make sm'e of the things that unite. It 
was but an historical accident no doubt that this great 
country was called the "United States," and yet I am very 
thankful that it has the word "united" in its title; and the 
man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, 
interest from interest, in the United States is striking at its 
very heart. 

It is a very interesting circumstance to me, in thinking of 
those of you who have just sworn allegiance to this great 
Government, that you were drawn across the ocean by some 
beckoning finger of hope, by some belief, by some vision of a 
new kind of justice, by some expectation of a better kind of 
life. 

No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us; some 
of us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that 
■justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and 
a right purpose, as it does everywhere else in the world. No 
doubt what you found here did n't seem touched for you, 
after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you 
had conceived beforehand. 

But remember this, if we had grown at all poor in the 
ideal, you brought some of it with you. A man does not go 
out to seek the thing that is not in him. A man does not 
hope for the thing that he does not believe in; and if some 
of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any 
rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. 
That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. 

If I have in any degree forgotten what America was in- 
tended for, I will thank God if you will remind me. 

I was born in America. You dreamed dreams of what 
America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with 



AMERICANISM AND THE FOREIGN-BORN 181 

you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize any 
high hope or undertake any high enterprise. 

Just because you brought dreams with you, America is 
more likely to realize the dreams such as you brought. You 
are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than 
we are. 

See, my friends, what that means. It means that America 
must have a consciousness different from the consciousness of 
every other nation in the world. I am not saying this with 
even the slightest thought of criticism of other nations. You 
know how it is with a family. A family gets centered on it- 
self if it is not careful and is less interested in the neighbors 
than it is in its own members. 

So a nation that is not constantly renewed out of new 
sources is apt to have the narrowness and prejudice of a 
family. Whereas, America must have this consciousness, 
that on all sides it touches elbows and touches hearts with 
all the nations of mankind. 

The example of America must be a special example. The 
example of America must be the example not merely of 
peace because it will not fight, but of peace because peace 
is the healing and elevating influence of the world and strife 
is not. 

There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. 
There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does 
not need to convince others by force that it is right. 

So, if you come into this great nation as you have come, 
voluntarily seeking something that we have to give, all that 
we have to give is this : We cannot exempt you from work. 
No man is exempt from work anywhere in the world. I some- 
times think he is fortunate if he has to work only with his 
hands and not with his head. It is very easy to do what 
other people give you to do, but it is very difficult to give 
other people things to do. We cannot exempt you from 



182 AMERICAN DEMOCRACY 

work; we cannot exempt you from the strife and the heart- 
breaking burden of the struggle of the day — that is com- 
mon to mankind everywhere. We cannot exempt you from 
the loads you must carry ; we can only make tliem light by the 
spirit in which they are carried. That is the spirit of hope, 
it is the spirit of liberty, it is the spirit of justice. 

When I was asked, therefore, by the Mayor and the com- 
mittee that accompanied him to come up from Washington 
to meet this great company of newly admitted citizens I 
could not decline the invitation. I ought not to be away 
from Washington, and yet I feel that it has renewed my 
spirit as an American. 

In Washington men tell you so many things every day 
that are not so, and I like to come and stand in the presence 
of a great body of my fellow-citizens, whether they have been 
my fellow-citizens a long time or a short time, and drink, 
as it were, out of the common fountains with them and go 
back feeling that you have so generously given me the sense 
of your support and of the hving vitahty in your hearts, of 
its great ideals which made America the hope of the world. 



IV 

AMERICAN FOEEIGN POLICY 



COUNSEL ON ALLIANCES! 

GEORGE WASfflNGTON 

Obsi^rve good faith and justice toward all nations; culti- 
vate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality 
enjoin this conduct; and can it be, that good policy does not 
equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, 
and, at no distant period, a great nation, to give to mankind 
the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always 
guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can 
doubt that, in the course of time and things, the fruits of 
such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages 
which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be, 
that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity 
of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is rec- 
ommended by every sentiment which ennobles human na- 
ture. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices? 

In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential 
than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particu- 
lar nations, and passionate attachments for others, should 
be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable 
feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which 
indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual 
fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its ani- 
mosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead 
it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one 

* Fromthe"Farewell Address," September, 1796. The address was prob- 
ably written by Hamilton and Madison. The familiar phrase "entangling 
alliances," popularly attributed to Washington, is to be found in Jefferson's 
"First Inaugural Address" (see p. 59 of the present volume). 



186 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

nation against another disposes each more readily to offer in- 
sult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and 
to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling 
occasions of dispute occur. Hence frequent collisions, ob- 
stinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, 
prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to 
war the government, contrary to the best calculations of 
policy. The government sometimes participates in the na- 
tional propensity, and adopts through passion what reason 
would reject; at other times, it makes the animosity of the 
nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by 
pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. 
The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations 
has been the victim. 

So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for 
another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the fa- 
vorite nation facilitating the illusion of an imaginary com- 
mon interest, in cases where no real common interest exists, 
and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the 
former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the 
latter, without adequate inducement or justification. It 
leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges 
denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation 
making the concessions : by unnecessarily parting with what 
ought to have been retained; and by exciting jealousy, ill- 
will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom 
equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, 
corrupted or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the 
favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests 
of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with 
popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous 
sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public 
opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base of foolish 
compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation. 



COUNSEL ON ALLIANCES 187 

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such 
attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlight- 
ened and independent patriot. How many opportunities 
do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to prac- 
tise the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to in- 
fluence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of 
a small or weak, towards a great and powerful nation, dooms 
the former to be the satellite of the latter. 

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure 
you to believe me, fellow-citizens), the jealousy of a free 
people ought to be constantly awake; since history and ex- 
perience prove that foreign influence is one of the most 
baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, 
to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the instru- 
ment of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a de- 
fence against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation, 
and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom they 
actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and 
even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots, 
who may resist the intrigues of the favorite, are liable to be- 
come suspected and odious; while its tools and dupes usurp 
the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their 
interests. 

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign na- 
tions, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with 
them as little political connection as possible. So far as we 
have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled 
with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. 

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have 
none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be en- 
gaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are 
essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it 
must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial 
ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the 



188 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or 
enmities. 

Om- detached and distant situation invites and enables us 
to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under 
an efficient government, the period is not far off, when we 
may defy material injury from external annoyance; when 
we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we 
may at any time resolve upon, to be scrupulously respected ; 
when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making 
acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us 
provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our in- 
terest, guided by justice, shall counsel. 

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? 
Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by 
interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, 
entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European 
ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice? 

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances 
with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we 
are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as 
capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I 
hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private 
affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, 
therefore, let those engagements be observed in their gen- 
uine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would 
be unwise to extend them. 

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable estab- 
lishments, on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely 
trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies. 

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recom- 
mended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our 
commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand : 
neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; 
consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diver- 



COUNSEL ON ALLIANCES 189 

sifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forc- 
ing nothing; estabUshing, with powers so disposed, in order 
to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our mer- 
chants, and to enable the government to support them, con- 
ventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circum- 
stances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and 
liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as ex- 
perience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keep- 
ing in view, that it is folly in one nation to look for disinter- 
ested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion 
of its independence for whatever it may accept under that 
character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the 
condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, 
and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving 
more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calcu- 
late upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illu- 
sion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought 
to discard. 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE ^ 
JAMES MONROE 

At the proposal of the Russian Imperial Government, 
made through the minister of the Emperor residing here, a 
full power and instructions have been transmitted to the 
minister of the United States at St. Petersburg to arrange 
by amicable negotiation the respective rights and interests 
of the two nations on the northwest coast of this continent. 
A similar proposal had been made by His Imperial Majesty 
to the Government of Great Britain, which has likewise been 
acceded to. The Government of the United States has been 
desirous by this friendly proceeding of manifesting the great 
value which they have invariably attached to the friend- 
ship of the Emperor and their solicitude to cultivate the 
best understanding with his Government. In the discussions 
to which this interest has given rise and in the arrangements 
by which they may terminate the occasion has been judged 
proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and 
interests of the United States are involved, that the Ameri- 
can continents, by the free and independent condition which 
they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be 
considered as subjects for future colonization by any Eu- 
ropean powers. . . . 

It was stated at the commencement of the last session 
that a great effort was then making in Spain and Portugal 
to improve the condition of the people of those countries, 
and that it appeared to be conducted with extraordinary 

* From the Message of December 2, 1823, outlining the Monroe Doc- 
trine. 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 191 

moderation. It need scarcely be remarked that the result 
has been so far very different from what was then antici- 
pated. Of events in that quarter of the globe, with which 
we have so much intercourse and from which we derive our 
origin, we have always been anxious and interested specta- 
tors. The citizens of the United States cherish sentiments 
the most friendly in favor of the liberty and happiness of 
their fellow-men on that side of the Atlantic. In the wars of 
the European powers in matters relating to themselves we 
have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our 
policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or 
seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make prepara- 
tion for our defense. With the movements in this hemi- 
sphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and 
by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and im- 
partial observers. The political system of the allied powers 
is essentially different in this respect from that of America. 
This difference proceeds from that which exists in their re- 
spective Governments; and to the defense of our own, which 
has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, 
and matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citi- 
zens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, 
this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to can- 
dor and the amicable relations existing between the United 
States and those powers to declare that we should consider 
any attempt on their part to extend their system to any por- 
tion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. 
With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European 
power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But 
with the Governments who have declared their independ- 
ence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, 
on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, 
we could not view any interposition for the purpose of 
oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their 



19« AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as 
the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the 
United States. In the war between those new Governments 
and Spain we declared our neutrality at the time of their 
recognition, and to this we have adhered, and shall continue 
to adhere, provided no change shall occur which, in the 
judgment of the competent authorities of this Government, 
shall make a corresponding change on the part of the United 
States indispensable to their security. 

The late events in Spain and Portugal show that Europe 
is still unsettled. Of this important fact no stronger proof 
can be adduced than that the allied powers should have 
thought it proper, on any principle satisfactory to them- 
selves, to have interposed by force in the internal concerns 
of Spain. To what extent such interposition may be carried, 
on the same principle, is a question in which all independent 
powers whose governments differ from theirs are interested, 
even those most remote, and surely none more so than the 
United States. Our policy in regard to Europe, which was 
adopted at an early stage of the wars which have so long 
agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless remains the 
same, which is, not to interfere in the internal concerns of 
any of its powers; to consider the government de facto as the 
legitimate government for us; to cultivate friendly relations 
with it, and to preserve those relations by a frank, firm, and 
manly policy, meeting in all instances the just claims of every 
power, submitting to injuries from none. But in regard to 
those continents circumstances are eminently and conspicu- 
ously different. It is impossible that the alhed powers should 
extend their political system to any portion of either conti- 
nent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can 
any one believe that our southern brethren, if left to them- 
selves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally im- 
possible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 193 

in any form with indifference. If we look to the comparative 
strength and resources of Spain and those new Governments, 
and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that 
she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the 
United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope 
that other powers will pursue the same course. 



THE EMANCIPATION OF SOUTH AMERICA i 
HENRY CLAY 

Three hundred years ago, upon the ruins of the thrones 
of Montezuma and the Incas of Peru, Spain erected the most 
stupendous system of colonial despotism that the world has 
ever seen — the most vigorous, the most exclusive. The 
great principle and object of this system has been to render 
one of the largest portions of the world exclusively subser- 
vient, in all its faculties, to the interests of an inconsiderable 
spot in Europe. To efiFectuate this aim of her policy, she 
locked up Spanish America from all the rest of the world, 
and prohibited, under the severest penalties, any foreigner 
from entering any part of it. To keep the natives themselves 
ignorant of each other, and of the strength and resources of 
the several parts of her American possessions, she next pro- 
hibited the inhabitants of one viceroyalty or government 
from visiting those of another; so that the inhabitants of 
Mexico, for example, were not allowed to enter the vice- 
royalty of New Granada. The agriculture of those vast re- 
gions was so regulated and restrained, as to prevent all col- 
lision with the agriculture of the peninsula. Where nature, 
by the character and composition of the soil, had commanded, 
the abominable system of Spain has forbidden, the growth 
of certain articles. Thus the olive and the vine, to which 
Spanish America is so well adapted, are prohibited, wherever 

* From a speech delivered before the House of Representatives, March 
24, 1818. His ideas, though rejected by Congress, were endorsed in 1820, 
and in 1822 certain of the Latin American countries were fonnally reo 
ognized. 



THE EMANCIPATION OF SOUTH AMERICA 195 

their culture can interfere with the olive and the vine of the 
peninsula. The commerce of the country, in the direction 
and objects of the exports and imports, is also subjected to 
the narrow and selfish views of Spain, and fettered by the 
odious spirit of monopoly, existing in Cadiz. She has sought 
by scattering discord among the several castes of her Amer- 
ican population, and by a debasing course of education, to 
perpetuate her oppression. Whatever concerns public law, 
or the science of government, all writings upon political econ- 
omy, or that tend to give vigor, and freedom, and expansion, 
to the intellect, are prohibited. Gentlemen would be aston- 
ished by the long list of distinguished authors, whom she 
proscribes, to be found in Depons' and other works. A main 
feature in her policy is that which constantly elevates the 
European and depresses the American character. Out of 
upwards of seven hundred and fifty viceroys and captains- 
general, whom she has appointed since the conquest of 
America, about eighteen only have been from the body of 
the American population. On all occasions she seeks to 
raise and promote her European subjects, and to degrade 
and humiliate the Creoles. Wherever in America her sway 
extends, everything seems to pine and wither beneath its 
baneful influence. The richest regions of the earth, man, 
his happiness and his education, all the fine faculties of his 
soul, are regulated and modified, and moulded, to suit the 
execrable purposes of an inexorable despotism. 

Such is a brief and imperfect picture of the state of things 
in Spanish America, in 1808, when the famous transactions 
of Bayonne occurred. The King of Spain and the Indies (for 
Spanish America has always constituted an integral part of 
the Spanish empire) abdicated his throne and became a vol- 
untary captive. Even at this day one does not know whether 
he should most condemn the baseness and perfidy of the one 
party, or despise the meanness and imbecility of the other. 



196 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

If the obligation of obedience and allegiance existed on the 
part of the colonies to the King of Spain, it was founded oh 
the duty of protection which he owed them. By disqualify- 
ing himself for the performance of this duty, they became 
released from that obligation. The monarchy was dissolved; 
and each integral part had a right to seek its own happiness, 
by the institution of any new government adapted to its 
wants. Joseph Bonaparte, the successor de facto of Ferdi- 
nand, recognized this right on the part of the colonies, and 
recommended them to establish their independence. Thus, 
upon the ground of strict right, upon the footing of a mere 
legal question, governed by forensic rules, the colonies, being 
absolved by the acts of the parent country from the duty of 
subjection to it, had an indisputable right to set up for them- 
selves. But I take a broader and a bolder position. I main- 
tain, that an oppressed people are authorized, whenever 
they can, to rise and break their fetters. This was the great 
principle of the English revolution. It was the great princi- 
ple of our own. Vattel, if authority were wanting, expressly 
supports this right. We must pass sentence of condemna- 
tion upon the founders of our liberty, say that they were 
rebels, traitors, and that we are at this moment legislating 
without competent powers, before we can condemn the 
cause of Spanish America. Our revolution was mainly di- 
rected against the mere theory of tyranny. We had suffered 
comparatively but little; we had, in some respects, been 
kindly treated; but our intrepid and intelligent fathers saw, 
in the usurpation of the power to levy an inconsiderable tax, 
the long train of oppressive acts that were to follow. They 
rose; they breasted the storm; they achieved our freedom. 
Spanish America for centuries has been doomed to the 
practical effects of an odious tyranny. If we were justified, 
she is more than justified. 

I am no propagandist. I would not seek to force upon 



THE EMANCIPATION OF SOUTH AMERICA 197 

other nations our principles and our liberty, if they do not 
want them. I would not disturb the repose even of a detest- 
able despotism. But if an abused and oppressed people will 
their freedom; if they seek to establish it; if, in truth, they 
have established it; we have a right, as a sovereign power, to 
notice the fact, and to act as circumstances and our interest 
require. I will say, in the language of the venerated father 
of my country, "born in a land of liberty, my anxious recol- 
lections, my sympathetic feelings, and my best wishes, are 
irresistibly excited, whensoever, in any country, I see an 
oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom." When- 
ever I think of Spanish America, the image irresistibly 
forces itself upon my mind, of an elder brother, whose edu- 
cation has been neglected, whose person has been abused 
and maltreated, and who has been disinherited by the un- 
kindness of an unnatural parent. And, when I contemplate 
the glorious struggle which that country is now making, I 
think I behold that brother rising, by the power and energy 
of his fine native genius, to the manly rank which nature 
and nature's God intended for him. . . . 

In the establishment of the independence of Spanish 
America, the United States have the deepest interest. I 
have no hesitation in asserting my firm belief that there is no 
question in the foreign policy of this country which has ever 
arisen, or which I can conceive as ever occurring, in the de- 
cision of which we have had or can have so much at stake. 
This interest concerns our politics, our commerce, our navi- 
gation. There cannot be a doubt that, Spanish America 
once independent, whatever may be the form of the govern- 
ments established in its several parts, these governments 
will be animated by an American feeling, and guided by an 
American policy. They will obey the laws of the system of 
the new world, of which they will compose a part, in contra- 
distinction to that of Europe. Without the influence of that 



198 a:merican foreign policy 

vortex in Europe, the balance of power between its several 
parts, the preservation of which has so often drenched 
Europe in blood, America is sufficiently remote to contem- 
plate the new wars which are to afflict that quarter of the 
globe, as a calm if not a cold and indifferent spectator. In 
relation to those wars, the several parts of America wdll 
generally stand neutral. x\nd as, during the period when 
they rage, it will be important that a liberal system of neu- 
trality should be adopted and observed, all America will be 
interested in maintaining and enforcing such a system. The 
independence of Spanish America, then, is an interest of 
primary consideration. Next to that, and highly important 
in itseK, is the consideration of the nature of their govern- 
ments. That is a question, however, for themselves. They 
will, no doubt, adopt those kinds of governments which are 
best suited to their condition, best calculated for their hap- 
piness. Anxious as I am that they should be free govern- 
ments, we have no right to prescribe for them. They are, 
and ought to be, the sole judges for themselves. I am 
strongly inclined to believe that they will in most, if not all 
parts of their country, establish free governments. We are 
their great example. Of us they constantly speak as of 
brothers, having a similar origin. They adopt our princi- 
ples, copy our institutions, and, in many instances, employ 
the very language and sentiments of our revolutionary 
papers. 

But it is sometimes said that they are too ignorant and 
too superstitious to admit of the existence of free govern- 
ments. This charge of ignorance is often urged by persons 
themselves actually ignorant of the real condition of that 
people. I deny the alleged fact of ignorance; I deny the in- 
ference from that fact, if it were true, that they want capac- 
ity for free government; and I refuse assent to the further 
conclusion, if the fact were true, and the inference just, that 



THE EIVL^CIPATION OF SOUTH AMERICA 199 

we are to be indifferent to their fate. All the writers of the 
most established authority, Depons, Humboldt, and others, 
concur in assigning to the people of Spanish America great 
quickness, genius, and particular aptitude for the acquisi- 
tion of the exact sciences, and others which they have been 
allowed to cultivate. In astronomy, geology, mineralogy, 
chemistry, botany, and so forth, they are allowed to make 
distinguished proficiency. They justly boast of their Abzate, 
Velasques, and Gama and other illustrious contributors to 
science. They have nine universities, and in the city of 
Mexico, it is affirmed by Humboldt, that there are more 
solid scientific establishments than in any city even of 
North America. I would refer to the message of the su- 
preme director of La Plata, which I shall hereafter have oc- 
casion to use for another purpose, as a model of fine com- 
position of a state paper, challenging a comparison with any, 
the most celebrated, that ever issued from the pens of Jef- 
ferson or Madison. Gentlemen will egregiously err, if they 
form their opinions of the present moral condition of Span- 
ish America, from what it was under the debasing system of 
Spain. The eight years' revolution in which it has been en- 
gaged, has already produced a powerful effect. Education 
has been attended to, and genius developed. 



PAN-AMERICANISM ^ 

ROBERT LANSING 

Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Congress: — 
It is an especial gratification to me to address you to-day, 
not only as the officer of the United States who invited you 
to attend this great Scientific Congress of the American Re- 
publics, but also as the presiding member of the Governing 
Board of the Pan-American Union. In this dual capacity I 
have the honor and the pleasure to welcome you, gentlemen, 
to the capital of this country, in the full confidence that your 
deliberations will be of mutual benefit in your various spheres 
of thought and research — and not only in your individual 
spheres but in the all-embracing sphere of Pan-American 
unity and fraternity which is so near to the hearts of us all. 
It is the Pan-American spirit and the policy of Pan-Amer- 
icanism to which I would for a few moments direct yorn* at- 
tention at this early meeting of the Congress, since it is my 
earnest hope that "Pan- America*' will be the keynote which 
will influence your relations with one another and inspire 
your thoughts and words. 

Nearly a century has passed since President Monroe pro- 
claimed to the world his famous doctrine as the National 
policy of the United States. It was founded on the principle 
that the safety of this Republic would be imperiled by the 
extension of sovereign right by a European power over ter- 
ritory in this hemisphere. Conceived in a suspicion of mo- 
narchical institutions and in a full sympathy with the re- 

* Address of welcome by the Secretary of State, December 27, 1915, at 
the Second Pan-American Scientific Congress. 



PAN-AMERICANISM 201 

publican idea, it was uttered at a time when our neighbors to 
the south had won their independence and were gradually 
adapting themselves to the exercise of their newly acquired 
rights. To those struggling nations the doctrine became a 
shield against the great European powers, which in the spirit 
of the age coveted political control over the rich regions 
which the new-born States had made their own. 

The United States was then a small nation, but a nation 
which had been tried in the fire; a nation whose indomitable 
will had remained unshaken by the dangers through which 
it had passed. The announcement of the Monroe Doctrine 
was a manifestation of this will. It was a courageous thing 
for President Monroe to do. It meant much in those early 
days, not only to this country, but to those nations which 
were commencing a new life under the standard of liberty. 
How much it meant we can never know, since for four dec- 
ades it remained unchallenged. 

During that period the younger Republics of America, 
giving expression to the virile spirit born of independence 
and liberal institutions, developed rapidly and set their feet 
firmly on the path of national progress which has led them 
to that plane of intellectual and material prosperity which 
they to-day enjoy. 

Within recent years the Government of the United States 
has found no occasion, with the exception of the Venezuela 
boundary incident, to remind Europe that the Monroe Doc- 
trine continues unaltered a National policy of this Republic. 
The Republics of America are no longer children in the great 
family of nations. They have attained maturity. With en- 
terprise and patriotic fervor they are working out their sev- 
eral destinies. 

During this later time when the American Nations have 
come into a realization of their nationality and are fully con- 
scious of the responsibilities and privileges which are theirs 



202 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

as sovereign and independent States, there has grown up 
a feeling that the RepubUcs of this hemisphere constitute a 
group separate and apart from the other nations of the 
world, a group which is united by common ideals and 
common aspirations. I believe that this feeling is general 
throughout North and South America, and that year by 
year it has increased until it has become a potent influence 
over our political and commercial intercourse. It is the 
same feeling which, founded on sympathy and mutual in- 
terest, exists among the members of a family. It is the tie 
which draws together the twenty-one Republics and makes 
of them the American Family of Nations. 

This feeling, vague at first, has become to-day a definite 
and certain force. We term it the "Pan-American" spirit, 
from which springs the international policy of Pan-Ameri- 
canism. It is that policy which is responsible for this great 
gathering of distinguished men, who represent the best and 
most advanced thought of the Americas. It is a policy which 
this Government has unhesitatingly adopted and which it 
will do all in its power to foster and promote. 

When we attempt to analyze Pan-Americanism we find 
that the essential qualities are those of the family — sym- 
pathy, helpfulness and a sincere desire to see another grow 
in prosperity, absence of covetousness of another's posses- 
sions, absence of jealousy of another's prominence, and, 
above all, absence of that spirit of intrigue which menaces 
the domestic peace of a neighbor. Such are the qualities of 
the family tie among individuals, and such should be, and I 
believe are, the qualities which compose the tie which unites 
the American Family of Nations. 

I speak only for the Government of the United States, 
but in doing so I am sure that I express sentiments which 
will find an echo in every Republic represented here, when 
I say that the might of this country will never be exercised 



PAN-AMERICANISM 203 

in a spirit of greed to wrest from a neighboring state its 
territory or possessions. The ambitions of this RepubUc do 
not He in the path of conquest but in the paths of peace and 
justice. Whenever and wherever we can, we will stretch 
forth a hand to those who need help. If the sovereignty of a 
sister Republic is menaced from overseas, the power of the 
United States and, I hope and believe, the united power of 
the American Republics will constitute a bulwark which will 
protect the independence and integrity of their neighbor 
from unjust invasion or aggression. The American Family 
of Nations might well take for its motto that of Dumas's 
famous musketeers, "One for all; all for one." 

If I have correctly interpreted Pan-Americanism from the 
standpoint of the relations of our Governments with those 
beyond the seas, it is in entire harmony with the Monroe 
Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine is a national policy of the 
United States; Pan-Americanism is an international policy 
of the Americas. The motives are to an extent different; 
the ends sought are the same. Both can exist without im- 
pairing the force of either. And both do exist and, I trust, 
will ever exist in all their vigor. 

But Pan-Americanism extends beyond the sphere of pol- 
itics and finds its application in the varied fields of human 
enterprise. Bearing in mind that the essential idea mani- 
fests itself in cooperation, it becomes necessary for effective 
co5peration that we should know each other better than we 
do now. We must not only be neighbors, but friends; not 
only friends, but intimates. We must understand one another. 
We must comprehend our several needs. We must study the 
phases of material and intellectual development which enter 
into the varied problems of national progress. We should, 
therefore, when opportunity offers, come together and fa- 
miliarize ourselves with each other's processes of thought in 
dealing with legal, economic, and educational questions. 



204 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

Commerce and industry, science and art, public and pri- 
vate law, government and education, all those great fields 
which invite the intellectual thought of man, fall within the 
province of the deliberations of this congress. In the ex- 
change of ideas and comparison of experiences we will come 
to know one another and to carry to the nations which we 
represent a better and truer knowledge of our neighbors 
than we have had in the past. I believe that from that wider 
knowledge a mutual esteem and trust will spring which will 
unite these Republics more closely politically, commercially, 
and intellectually, and will give to the Pan-American spirit 
an impulse and power which it has never known before. 

The present epoch is one which must bring home to every 
thinking American the wonderful benefits to be gained by 
trusting our neighbors and by being trusted by them, by 
cooperation and helpfulness, by a dignified regard for the 
rights of all, and by living our national lives in harmony and 
good-will. 

Across the thousands of miles of the Atlantic we see 
Europe convulsed with the most terrible conflict which this 
world has ever witnessed; we see the manhood of these great 
nations shattered, their homes ruined, their productive 
energies devoted to the one purpose of destroying their 
fellow-men. When we contemplate the untold misery which 
these once happy people are enduring and the heritage 
which they are transmitting to succeeding generations, we 
cannot but contrast a continent at war and a continent at 
peace. The spectacle teaches a lesson we cannot ignore. 

If we seek the dominant ideas in world-politics since we 
became independent nations, we will find that we won our 
liberties when individualism absorbed men's thoughts and 
inspired their deeds. This idea was gradually supplanted by 
that of nationalism, which found expression in the ambitions 
of conquest and the greed for territory so manifest in the 



PAN-AMERICANISM 205 

nineteenth century. Following the impulse of nationalism 
the idea of internationalism began to develop. It appeared 
to be an increasing influence throughout the civilized world, 
when the present war of empires, that great manifestation 
of nationalism, stayed its progress in Europe and brought 
discouragement to those who had hoped that the new idea 
would usher in an era of universal peace and justice. 

While we are not actual participants in the momentous 
struggle which is shattering the ideals toward which civ- 
ilization was moving and is breaking down those principles 
on which internationalism is founded, we stand as anxious 
spectators of this most terrible example of nationalism. Let 
us hope that it is the final outburst of the cardinal evils of 
that idea which has for nearly a century spread its baleful 
influence over the world. 

Pan-Americanism is an expression of the idea of inter- 
nationalism. America has become the guardian of that idea, 
which will in the end rule the world. Pan- Americanism is 
the most advanced as well as the most practical form of that 
idea. It has been made possible because of our geographical 
isolation, of our similar political institutions, and of our 
common conception of human rights. Since the European 
War began, other factors have strengthened this natural 
bond and given impulse to the movement. Never before 
have our people so fully realized the significance of the words 
"peace" and "fraternity." Never have the need and bene- 
fit of international cooperation in every form of human ac- 
tivity been so evident as they are to-day. 

The path of opportunity lies plain before us Americans. 
The government and people of every Republic should strive 
to inspire in others confidence and cooperation by exhibiting 
integrity of purpose and equity in action. Let us as mem- 
bers of this congress, therefore, meet together on the plane 
of common interests, and together seek the common good. 



206 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

Whatever is of common interest, whatever makes for the 
common good, whatever demands united effort is a fit sub- 
ject for appHed Pan-Americanism. Fraternal helpfulness is 
the keystone to the arch. Its pillars are faith and justice. 

In this great movement this congress will, I beheve, play 
an exalted part. You, gentlemen, represent powerful intel- 
lectual forces in your respective countries. Together you 
represent the enlightened thought of the continent. The 
policy of Pan-Americanism is practical. The Pan-American 
spirit is ideal. It finds its source and being in the minds of 
thinking men. It is the offspring of the best, the noblest con- 
ception of international obligation. 

With all earnestness, therefore, I commend to you, gentle- 
men, the thought of the American Republics, twenty-one 
sovereign and independent nations, bound together by faith 
and justice, and firmly cemented by a sympathy which 
knows no superior and no inferior, but which recognizes only 
equality and fraternity. 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE i 
A. LAWRENCE LOWELL 

In spite of its ominous sound, the suggestion of a league 
of nations to enforce peace has no connection with any effort 
to stop the present war. It is aimed solely at preventing 
future conflicts after the terrific struggle now raging has 
come to an end; and yet this is not a bad time for people in 
private life to bring forward proposals of such a nature. Ow- 
ing to the vast number of soldiers under arms, to the propor- 
tion of men and women in the warring countries who suffer 
acutely, to the extent of the devastation and misery, it is 
probable that, whatever the result may be, the people of all 
nations will be more anxious to prevent the outbreak of 
another war than ever before in the history of the world. 
The time is not yet ripe for governments to take action, but 
it is ripe for public discussion of practicable means to reduce 
the danger of future breaches of international peace. 

The nations of the world to-day are in much the position 
of frontier settlements in America haK a century ago, before 
orderly government was set up. The men there were in the 
main well disposed, but in the absence of an authority that 
could enforce order each man, feeling no other security from 
attack, carried arms which he was prepared to use if danger 
threatened. The first step, when affrays became unbear- 
able, was the formation of a vigilance committee, supported 
by the enrollment of all good citizens, to prevent men from 
shooting one another and to punish offenders. People did 

1 Reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, September, 1915, through the 
generous permission of the author and of the Atlantic Monthly Publishing 
Company. 



208 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

not wait for a gradual improvement by the preaching of 
higher ethics and a better civiHzation. They felt that vio- 
lence must be met by force, and, when the show of force was 
strong enough, violence ceased. In time the vigilance com- 
mittee was replaced by the policeman and by the sheriff 
with the posse comitatus. The policeman and the sheriff 
maintain order because they have the bulk of the community 
behind them, and no country has yet reached, or is likely for 
an indefinite period to reach, such a state of civilization that 
it can wholly dispense with the police. 

Treaties for the arbitration of international disputes are 
good. They have proved an effective method of settling 
questions that would otherwise have bred ill-feeling without 
directly causing war; but when passion runs high, and deep- 
rooted interests or sentiments are at stake, there is need of 
the sheriff with his posse to enforce the obligation. There 
are, no doubt, differences in the conception of justice and 
right, divergencies of civilization, so profound that people 
will fight over them, and face even the prospect of disaster 
in war rather than submit. Yet even in such cases it is worth 
while to postpone the conflict, to have a public discussion of 
the question at issue before an impartial tribunal, and thus 
give to the people of the countries involved a chance to con- 
sider, before hostilities begin, whether the risk and suffering 
of war is really worth while. No sensible man expects to 
abolish wars altogether, but we ought to seek to reduce 
the probability of war as much as possible. It is on these 
grounds that the suggestion has been put forth of a league of 
nations to enforce peace. 

Without attempting to cover details of operation, which 
are, indeed, of vital importance and will require careful 
study by experts in international law and diplomacy, the 
proposal contains four points stated as general objects. 
The first is that before resorting to arms the members of the 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 209 

league shall submit disputes with one another, if justiciable, 
to an international tribunal; second, that in like manner 
they shall submit non-justiciable questions (that is, such as 
cannot be decided on the basis of strict international law) to 
an international council of conciliation, which shall recom- 
mend a fair and amicable solution; third, that if any member 
of the league wages war against another before submitting 
the question in dispute to the tribunal or council, all the 
other members shall jointly use forthwith both their eco- 
nomic and military forces against the state that so breaks the 
peace; and, fourth, that the signatory powers shall endeavor 
to codify and improve the rules of international law. 

The kernel of the proposal, the feature in which it differs 
from other plans, lies in the third point, obliging all the mem- 
bers of the league to declare war on any member violating 
the pact of peace. This is the provision that provokes both 
adherence and opposition; and at first it certainly gives one 
a shock that a people should be asked to pledge itself to go 
to war over a quarrel which is not of its making, in which it 
has no interest, and in which it may believe that substantial 
justice lies on the other side. If, indeed, the nations of the 
earth could maintain complete isolation, could pursue each 
its own destiny without regard to the rest, if they were not 
affected by a war between two others or liable to be drawn 
into it; if, in short, there were no overwhelming common in- 
terest in securing universal peace, the provision would be in- 
tolerable. It would be as bad as the liability of an individ- 
ual to take part in the posse comitatus of a community with 
which he had nothing in common. But in every civilized 
country the public force is employed to prevent any man, 
however just his claim, from vindicating his own right with 
his own hand instead of going to law; and every citizen is 
bound, when needed, to assist in preventing him, because 
that is the only way to restrain private war, and the main- 



210 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

tenance of order is of paramount importance for every one. 
Surely the family of nations has a like interest in restraining 
war between states. 

It will be observed that the members of the league are not 
to bind themselves to enforce the decision of the tribunal or 
the award of the council of conciliation. That may come in 
the remote future, but it is no part of this proposal. It would 
be imposing obligations far greater than the nations can 
reasonably be expected to assume at the present day; for the 
conceptions of international morality and fair play are still 
so vague and divergent that a nation can hardly bind itself 
to wage war on another, with which it has no quarrel, to en- 
force a decision or a recommendation of whose justice or 
wisdom it may not be itself heartily convinced. The proposal 
goes no farther than obliging all the members to prevent by 
threat of armed intervention a breach of the public peace 
before the matter in dispute has been submitted to arbi- 
tration, and this is neither unreasonable nor impracticable. 
There are many questions, especially of a non- justiciable 
nature, on which we should not be willing to bind ourselves 
to accept the decision of an arbitration, and where we should 
regard compulsion by armed intervention of the rest of the 
world as outrageous. Take, for example, the question of 
Asiatic immigration, or a claim that the Panama Canal ought 
to be an unfortified neutral highway, or the desire by a Euro- 
pean power to take possession of Colombia. But we ought 
not, in the interest of universal peace, to object to making a 
public statement of our position in an international court 
or council before resorting to arms; and in fact the treaty 
between the United States and Great Britain, ratified on 
November 14, 1914, provides that all disputes between the 
high contracting parties, of every nature whatsoever, shall, 
failing other methods of adjustment, be referred for investi- 
gation and report to a Permanent International Commission 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 211 

with a stipulation that neither country shall declare war or 
begin hostilities during such investigation and before the 
report is submitted. 

What is true of this coimtry is true of others. To agree to 
abide by the result of an arbitration, on every non-justici- 
able question of every nature whatsoever, on pain of com- 
pulsion in any form by the whole world, would involve a 
greater cession of sovereignty than nations would now be 
willing to concede. This appears, indeed, perfectly clearly 
from the discussions at the Hague Conference of 1907. But 
to exclude differences that do not turn on questions of in- 
ternational law from the cases where a state must present 
the matter to a tribunal or council of conciliation before 
beginning hostilities, would leave very little check upon the 
outbreak of war. Almost every conflict between European 
nations for more than half a century has been based upon 
some dissension which could not be decided by strict rules 
of law, and in which a violation of international law or of 
treaty rights has usually not even been used as an excuse. 
This was true of the war of France and Sardinia against 
Austria in 1859, and in substance of the war between Prussia 
and Austria in 1866. It was true of the Franco-Prussian 
War in 1870, of the Russo-Turkish War in 1876, of the Bal- 
kan War against Turkey in 1912, and of the present war. 

No one will claim that a league to enforce peace, such as is 
proposed, would wholly prevent war, but it would greatly 
reduce the probability of hostilities. It would take away the 
advantage of surprise, of catching the enemy unprepared 
for a sudden attack. It would give a chance for public opin- 
ion on the nature of the controversy to be formed through- 
out the world and in the militant country. The latter is of 
great importance, for the moment war is declared argument 
about its merits is at once stifled. Passion runs too high for 
calm debate, and patriotism forces people to support their 



212 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

government. But a trial before an international tribunal 
would give time for discussion while emotion is not yet highly- 
inflamed. Men opposed to war would be able to urge its in- 
justice, to ask whether, after all, the oljject is worth the sacri- 
fice, and they would get a hearing from their fellow citizens 
which they cannot get after war begins. The mere delay, the 
interval for consideration, would be an immense gain for the 
prospect of a peaceful settlement. 

In this connection it may be of interest to recall the way 
in which the medieval custom of private war was abolished 
in England. It was not done at one step, but gradually, by 
preventing men from avenging their own wrongs before 
going to court. The trial by battle long remained a recog- 
nized part of judicial procedure, but only after the case had 
been presented to the court, and only in accordance with ju- 
dicial forms. This had the effect of making the practice far 
less common, and of limiting it to the principals in the quar- 
rel instead of involving a general breach of the peace in 
which their retainers and friends took part. Civilization was 
still too crude to give up private war, but the arm of the law 
and the force in the hands of the Crown were strong enough 
to delay a personal conflict until the case had been presented 
to court. Without such a force the result could not have 
been attained. 

Every one will admit this in the case of private citizens, 
but many people shrink from the use of international force to 
restrain war; some of them on the principle of strict non- 
resistance, that any taking of life in war cannot be justified, 
no matter what its purpose or effect. Such people have the 
most lofty moral ideals, but these are not the whole of true 
statesmanship, which must aim at the total welfare and 
strive to lessen the scourges of mankind even by forcible 
means. Many years ago when an Atlantic steamship was 
wrecked, it was said that some of the crew made a rush for 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 213 

the boats, beating the passengers off, and that the captain, 
when he was urged to restore order by shooting a mutineer, 
rephed that he was too near eternity to take hfe. The result 
was a far greater loss of life than would have been suffered 
had he restored order by force. Probably no man with the 
instincts of a statesman would defend his conduct to-day. 
He was not a coward, but his sentiments unfitted him for a 
responsible post in an emergency. 

Most people who have been thinking seriously about the 
maintenance of peace are tending to the opinion that a sanc- 
tion of some kind is needed to enforce the observance of 
treaties and of agreements for arbitration. Among the meas- 
ures proposed has been that of an international police force, 
under the control of a central council which could use it to 
preserve order throughout the world. At present such a plan 
seems visionary. The force would have to be at least large 
enough to cope with the army that any single nation could 
put into the field — under existing conditions let us say five 
millions of men fully equipped and supplied with artillery 
and ammunition for a campaign of several months. These 
troops need not be under arms, or quartered near The 
Hague, but they must be thoroughly trained and ready to 
be called out at short notice. Practically that would entail 
yearly votes of the legislative bodies of each of the nations 
supplying a quota, and if any one of them failed to make the 
necessary appropriation there would be great difficulty in 
preventing others from following its example. The whole 
organization would, therefore, be in constant danger of 
going to pieces. 

But quite apart from the practical difficulties in the per- 
manent execution of such a plan, let us see how it would 
affect the United States. The amount of the contingents of 
the various countries would be apportioned with some re- 
gard to population, wealth and economic resources; and if 



214 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

the total were five million men, our quota on a moderate es- 
timate might be five hundred thousand men. Is it conceiv- 
able that the United States would agree to keep anything 
like that number drilled, equipped and ready to take the 
field on the order of an international council composed mainly 
of foreign nations? Of course it will be answered that these 
figures are exaggerated because any such plan wall be ac- 
companied by a reduction in armaments. But that is an 
easier thing to talk about than to effect, and especially to 
maintain. One must not forget that the existing system 
of universal compulsory military service on the continent of 
Europe arose from Napoleon's attempt to limit the size of 
the Prussian army. He would be a bold or sanguine man 
who should assert that any treaty to limit armaments could 
not in like manner be evaded; and, however much they were 
limited, the quantity of troops to be held at the disposal of a 
foreign council would of necessity be large, while no nation 
would be willing to pledge for the purpose the whole of its 
military force. Such a plan may be practicable in some 
remote future when the whole world is a vast federation 
under a central government, but that would seem to be a 
matter for coming generations, not for the men of our day. 

Moreover, the nations whose troops were engaged in 
fighting any country would inevitably find themselves at 
war with that country. 

One cannot imagine saying to some foreign state, "Our 
troops are killing yours, they are invading your land, we 
are supplying them with recruits and munitions of war, but 
otherwise we are at peace with you. You must treat us as a 
neutral, and accord to our citizens, to their commerce and 
property, all the rights of neutrality.'* In short, the plan of 
an international police force involves all the consequences 
of the proposal of a league to enforce peace, with other com- 
plex provisions extremely hard to execute. 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 215 

A suggestion more commonly made is that the members 
of the league of nations, instead of pledging themselves to 
use their military forces forthwith against any of their num- 
ber that commits a breach of the peace, should agree to 
hold at once a conference, and take such measures — dip- 
lomatic, economic, or military — as may be necessary to 
prevent war. The objection to this is that it weakens very 
seriously the sanction. Conferences are apt to shrink from 
decisive action. Some of the members are timid, others 
want delay, and much time is consumed in calling the body 
together and in discussions after it meets. Meanwhile the 
war may have broken out, and be beyond control. It is 
much easier to prevent a fire than to put it out. The country 
that is planning war is likely to think it has friends in the 
conference, or neighbors that it can intimidate, who will pre- 
vent any positive decision until the fire is burning. Even 
if the majority decide on immediate action, the minority is 
not bound thereby. One great power refuses to take part; 
a second will not do so without her, the rest hesitate and 
nothing is done to prevent the war, 

A conference is an excellent thing. The proposal of a 
league to enforce peace by no means excludes it; but the im- 
portant matter, the effective principle, is that every mem- 
ber of the league should know that whether a conference 
meets or not, or whatever action it may take or fail to take, 
all the members of the league have pledged themselves to 
declare war forthwith on any member that commits a breach 
of the peace before submitting its case to the international 
tribunal or council of conciliation. Such a pledge, and such 
a pledge alone, can have the strong deterrent influence, and 
thus furnish the sanction that is needed. Of course the 
pledge may not be kept. Like other treaties it may be 
broken by the parties to it. Nations are composed of human 
beings with human weaknesses, and one of these is a disin- 



216 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

clination to perform an agreement when it involves a sacri- 
fice. Nevertheless, nations, like men, often do have enough 
sense of honor, of duty, or of ultimate self-interest to carry 
out their contracts at no little immediate sacrifice. They are 
certainly more likely to do a thing if they have pledged them- 
selves to it than if they have not; and any nation would 
be running a terrible risk that went to war in the hope that 
the other members of the league would break their pledges. 

The same objection applies to another alternative pro- 
posed in place of an immediate resort to military force; that 
is the use of economic pressure, by a universal agreement, 
for example, to have no commercial intercourse with the na- 
tion breaking the peace. A threat of universal boycott is, 
no doubt, formidable, but by no means so formidable as a 
threat of universal war. A large country with great natiu'al 
resources which has determined to make war might be will- 
ing to face commercial nonintercourse with the other mem- 
bers of the league during hostilities, when it would not for a 
moment contemplate the risk of fighting them. A threat, 
for example, by England, France, and Germany to stop all 
trade with the United States might or might not have pre- 
vented our going to war with Spain, but a declaration that 
they would take part with all their armies and navies against 
us would certainly have done so. 

It has often been pointed out that the threat of general 
nonintercourse would bear much more hardly on some coun- 
tries than on others. That may not in itself be a fatal objec- 
tion, but a very serious consideration arises from the fact 
that there would be a premium on preparation for war. A 
nation which had accumulated vast quantities of munitions, 
food and supplies of all kinds, might afford to disregard it; 
while another less fully prepared could not. 

Moreover, economic pressure, although urged as a milder 
measure, is in fact more diflScult to apply and maintain. A 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 217 

declaration of war is a single act, and when made sustains 
itself by the passion it inflames; while commercial noninter- 
course is a continuous matter, subject to constant opposition 
exerted in an atmosphere relatively cool. Our manufacturers 
would complain bitterly at being deprived of dyestuffs and 
other chemical products on account of a quarrel in which we 
had no interest; the South would suffer severely by the loss 
of a market for cotton; the shipping firms and the exporters 
and importers of all kinds would be gravely injured; and 
all these interests would bring to bear upon Congress a 
pressure well-nigh irresistible. The same would be true of 
every other neutral country, a fact which would be perfectly 
well known to the intending belligerent and reduce its fear 
of a boycott. 

But, it is said, why not try economic pressure first, and, if 
that fails, resort to military force, instead of inflicting at 
once on unoffending members of the league the terrible ca- 
lamity of war? What do we mean by *'if that fails"? Do 
we mean, if in spite of the economic pressure the war breaks 
out? But then the harm is done, the fire is ablaze and can 
be put out only by blood. The object of the league is not to 
chastise a country guilty of breaking the peace, but to pre- 
vent the outbreak of war, and to prevent it by the immediate 
prospect of such appalling consequences to the offender that 
he will not venture to run the risk. If a number of great 
powers were to pledge themselves, with serious intent, to 
wage war jointly and severally on any one of their members 
that attacked another before submitting the case to arbitra- 
tion, it is in the highest degree improbable that the casus 
fosderis would ever occur, while any less drastic provision 
would be far less effective. 

An objection has been raised to the proposal for a league 
to enforce peace on the ground that it has in the past often 
proved difficult, if not impossible, to determine which of 



218 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

two belligerents began a war. The criticism is serious, and 
presents a practical difficulty, grave but probably not insur- 
mountable. The proposal merely lays down a general prin- 
ciple, and if adopted the details would have to be worked out 
very fully and carefully in a treaty which would specify the 
acts that would constitute the waging of war by one mem- 
ber upon another. These would naturally be, not the mere 
creating of apprehension, but specific acts, such as a declara- 
tion of war, invasion of territory, the use of force at sea not 
disowned within forty-eight hours, or an advance into a 
region in dispute. This last is an especially difficult point, 
but the portions of the earth's surface in which different 
nations have conflicting claims is growing less decade by 
decade. It must be remembered that the cases which would 
arise under a league of peace are not like those which have 
arisen in the past, where one nation was determined to go to 
war and merely sought to throw the moral responsibility on 
the other while getting the advantage of actually beginning 
hostilities. It is a case where each will strive to avoid the 
specific acts of war that may involve the penalty. The reader 
may have seen, in a country where personal violence is 
severely punished, two men shaking their fists in each other's 
faces, each trying to provoke the other to strike the first 
blow, and no fight after all. 

There are many agreements in private business which are 
not easy to embody in formal contracts; agreements where, 
as in this case, the execution of the terms calls for immediate 
action, and where redress after an elaborate trial of the facts 
affords no real reparation. But, if the object sought is good, 
men do not condemn it on account of the difficulty in de- 
vising provisions that will accomplish the result desired; cer- 
tainly not until they have tried to devise them. It may, in- 
deed, prove impossible to draft a code of specific acts that 
will cover the ground; it may be impracticable to draft it so 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 219 

as to avoid issues of fact that can be determined only after a 
long sifting of evidence which would come too late; but surely 
that is no reason for failure to make the attempt. We are not 
making a treaty among nations. We are merely putting for- 
ward a suggestion for reducing war which seems to merit 
consideration. 

A second difficulty that will sometimes arise is the rule of 
conduct to be followed pending the presentation of the ques- 
tion to the international tribunal. The continuance or ces- 
sation of the acts complained of may appear to be, and may 
even be in fact, more important than the final decision. 
This has been brought to our attention forcibly by the 
sinking of the Lusitania. We should have no objection to 
submitting to arbitration the question of the right of sub- 
marines to torpedo merchant ships without warning, pro- 
vided Germany abandoned the practice pending the arbi- 
tration; and Germany would probably have no objection to 
submitting the question to a tribunal on the understanding 
that the practice was to continue until the decision was ren- 
dered, because by that time the war would be over. This 
difficulty is inherent in every plan for the arbitration of in- 
ternational disputes, although more serious in a league whose 
members bind themselves to prevent by force the outbreak 
of war. It would be necessary to give the tribunal summary 
authority to decree a modus Vivendi, to empower it, like a 
court of equity, to issue a temporary injunction. 

In short, the proposal for a league to enforce peace cannot 
meet all possible contingencies. It cannot prevent all future 
wars, nor does any sensible person believe that any plan can 
do so in the present state of civilization. But it can prevent 
some wars that would otherwise take place, and, if it does 
that, it will have done much good. 

People have asked how such a league would differ from 
the Triple Alliance or Triple Entente, whether it would not 



220 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

be nominally a combination for peace which might have 
quite a different effect. But in fact its object is quite con- 
trary to those alliances. They are designed to protect their 
members against outside powers. This is intended to insure 
peace among the members themselves. If it grew strong 
enough, by including all the great powers, it might well in- 
sist on universal peace by compelling the outsiders to come 
in. But that is not its primary object, which is simply to pre- 
vent its members from going to war with one another. No 
doubt if several great nations, and some of the smaller ones, 
joined it, and if it succeeded in preserving constant friendly 
relations among its members, there would grow up among 
them a sense of solidarity, which would make any outside 
power chary of attacking one of them; and, what is more 
valuable, would make outsiders want to join it. But there 
is little use in speculating about probabilities. It is enough if 
such a league were a source of enduring peace among its own 
members. 

How about our own position in the United States? The 
proposal is a radical and subversive departure from the tra- 
ditional policy of our country. Would it be wise for us to be 
parties to such an agreement? At the threshold of such a 
discussion one thing is clear. If we are not willing to urge 
our own government to join a movement for peace, we have 
no business to discuss any plan for the purpose. It is worse 
than futile, it is an impertinence, for Americans to advise 
the people of Europe how they ought to conduct their affairs 
if we have nothing in common with them; to suggest to them 
conventions with burdens which are well enough for them, 
but which we are not willing to share. If our peace organiza- 
tions are not prepared to have us take part in the plans they 
devise, they had better disband, or confine their discussions 
to Pan-American questions. 

To return to the question; would it be wise for the United 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 221 

States to make so great a departure from its traditional 
policy? The wisdom of consistency lies in adherence to a 
principle so long as the conditions upon which it is based re- 
main unchanged. But the conditions that affect the relation 
of America to Europe have changed greatly in the last hun- 
dred and twenty years. At that time it took about a month 
to cross the ocean to our shores. Ships were small and could 
carry few troops. Their guns had a short range. No country 
had what would now be called more than a very small army; 
and it was virtually impossible for any foreign nation to 
make more than a raid upon our territory before we could 
organize and equip a suflScient force to resist, however un- 
prepared we might be at the outset. But now, by the im- 
provements in machinery, the Atlantic has shrunk to a lake, 
and before long will shrink to a river. Except for the protec- 
tion of the navy, and perhaps in spite of it, a foreign nation 
could land on our coast an army of such a size, and armed 
with such weapons, that unless we maintain troops several 
times larger than our present forces, we should be quite 
unable to oppose them before we had suffered incalculable 
damage. 

It is all very well to assert that we have no desire to quar- 
rel with any one, or any one with us; but good intentions in 
the abstract, even if accompanied by long-suffering and a dis- 
position to overlook affronts, will not always keep us out of 
strife. When a number of great nations are locked in a death 
grapple they are a trifle careless of the rights of the by- 
stander. Within fifteen years of Washington's Farewell Ad- 
dress we were drawn into the wars of Napoleon, and a sorry 
figure we made for the most part of the fighting on land. A 
hundred years later our relations with the rest of the world 
are far closer, our ability to maintain a complete isolation 
far less. Except by colossal self-deception we cannot believe 
that the convulsions of Europe do not affect us profoundly, 



222 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

that wars there need not disturb us, that we are not in danger 
of being drawn into them; or even that we may not some day 
find ourselves in the direct path of the storm. If our interest 
in the maintenance of peace is not quite so strong as that of 
some other nations, it is certainly strong enough to warrant 
our taking steps to preserve it, even to the point of joining a 
league to enforce it. The cost of the insurance is well worth 
the security to us. 

If mere material self-interest would indicate such a course, 
there are other reasons to confirm it. Civilization is to some 
extent a common heritage which it is worth while for all 
nations to defend, and war is a scourge which all peoples 
should use every rational means to reduce. If the family of 
nations can by standing together make wars less frequent, 
it is clearly their duty to do so, and in such a body we do not 
want the place of our own country to be vacant. 

To join such a league would mean, no doubt, a larger force 
of men trained for arms in this country, more munitions of 
war on hand, and better means of producing them rapidly; 
for although it may be assumed that the members of the 
league would never be actually called upon to carry out their 
promise to fight, they ought to have a potential force for 
the purpose. But in any case this country ought not to be 
so little prepared for an emergency as it is to-day, and it 
would require to be less fully armed if it joined a league 
pledged to protect its members against attack, than if it 
stood alone and unprotected. In fact the tendency of such 
a league, by procuring at least delay before the outbreak of 
hostilities, would be to lessen the need of preparation for im- 
mediate war, and thus have a more potent effect in reducing 
armaments than any formal treaties, whether made volun- 
tarily or under compulsion. 

The proposal for a league to enforce peace does not 
conflict with plans to go farther, to enforce justice among 



A LEAGUE TO ENFORCE PEACE 223 

nations by compelling compliance with the decisions of a 
tribunal by diplomatic, economic or military pressure. Nor, 
on the other hand, does it imply any such action, or inter- 
fere with the independence or sovereignty of states except 
in this one respect, that it would prohibit any member, be- 
fore submitting its claims to arbitration, from making war 
upon another on pain of finding itself at war with all the 
rest. The proposal is only a suggestion, defective probably, 
crude certainly, but if, in spite of that, it is the most promis- 
ing plan for maintaining peace now brought forward, it 
merits sympathetic consideration both here and abroad. 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE AND THE 

PROGRAM OF THE LEAGUE TO 

ENFORCE PEACE 1 

BY GEORGE GRAFTON WILSON 

There have been some arguments against the platform 
of the League to Enforce Peace. One of the most frequently 
advanced of these arguments is that the carrying out of the 
platform of the league would violate the so-called Monroe 
Doctrine. These words, the Monroe Doctrine, have been 
used to designate or to conceal such a variety of ideas and 
practices that it is necessary to start with some premise as 
to what the Monroe Doctrine may be. 

If the Monroe Doctrine is, as Professor Bingham says, 
an "obsolete shibboleth," it is clear that the relation of the 
platform of the league to the content of the doctrine would 
be one of historical and speculative interest only. If on the 
other hand it is, as M. Petin says, the substitution by the 
United States of an "American law for the general law of 
nations," the relation of the Monroe Doctrine to the plat- 
form of the league would be a fundamental question. If 
the Monroe Doctrine is an assertion of the "supremacy of 
the United States in the Western Hemisphere" or "suprem- 
acy in political leadership," there would also be reason for 
careful deliberation. 

1 This paper, by the Professor of International Law at Harvard Uni- 
versity, was read at the First National Assemblage of the League to En- 
force Peace at Washington on May 26, 1916, under the general topic 
"Practicability of the League Program." Professor Wilson has revised 
the paper for inclusion in this book. 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 225 

In any case, a careful investigation would show that the 
Monroe Doctrine is not a part of international law. The 
statement of the doctrine has varied. Early discussions in 
the Cabinet before the doctrine was set forth in Monroe's 
Message seem to have been as lively as some later ones upon 
the same subject. JeflFerson, when consulted upon the ad- 
visability of a policy which would not "suffer Europe to 
intermeddle with cis- Atlantic affairs/* comparing the Dec- 
laration of Independence with this doctrine, said: "That 
[the Declaration] made us a nation, this sets our compass 
and points the course which we are to steer through the 
ocean of time opening on us." In the early days of the Mon- 
roe Doctrine the aim was to avoid further European inter- 
ference in American affairs. Later, particularly from the 
days of President Polk, the doctrine assumed a more posi- 
tive form. Bismarck is reported to have called the doctrine 
a piece of "international impertinence." In 1901 President 
Roosevelt in his Annual Message declared: "The Monroe 
Doctrine should be the cardinal feature of the foreign pol- 
icy of all the nations of the two Americas, as it is of the 
United States," and in 1904 he said that "the Monroe Doc- 
trine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in 
flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence to the exer- 
cise of an international police power." President Taft in- 
timated in his Message in 1909 that "the apprehension which 
gave rise to the Monroe Doctrine may be said to have al- 
ready disappeared and neither the doctrine as it exists nor 
any other doctrine of American policy should be permitted 
to operate for the perpetuation of irresponsible government, 
the escape of just obligations or the insidious allegation of 
dominating ambitions on the part of the United States." 

The construction of the Panama Canal gave rise to new 
problems. The rumor that foreigners were making purchases 
of land about Magdalena Bay in Mexico led to pronounce- 



226 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

merits in the United States Senate, in 1912, that the United 
States could not view foreign possession of this or any such 
harbor "without grave concern," and it was admitted that 
this is a "statement of poUcy, aUied to the Monroe Doctrine, 
of course, but not necessarily dependent upon it or growing 
out of it." 

As in the early days the United States considered it within 
its rights to assert a policy defensive in its nature, but for 
the preservation of its well-being, so in later days the same 
general policy has taken differing forms. President Wilson 
early in his Administration endeavored to assure the Ameri- 
cas of his desire for the cordial cooperation of the people of 
the different nations, and a little later he asserted, "we are 
friends of constitutional government in America; we are 
more than its friends, we are its champions"; and, in the 
same message, he declared that the United States "must 
regard it as one of the duties of friendship to see that from 
no quarter are material interests made superior to human 
liberty and national opportunity." ^ President Roosevelt 
had in 1901 asserted that the doctrine referred not merely to 
European, but to "any non- American power." This was 
recognized abroad, as Sir Edward Grey said in 1911 of the 
United States: "They had a policy associated with the name 
of Monroe, the cardinal point of which was that no European 
or non-American nation should acquire fresh territory on 
the continent of America." 

In December, 1913, Mr. Page, the American Ambassador 
to Great Britain, announced a late form of policy, saying: 
"We have now developed subtler ways than taking their 
lands. There is the taking of their bonds, for instance. 
Therefore, the important proposition is that no sort of 
financial control can, without the consent of the United 

' Since this paper was written President Wilson has proposed a " Mon- 
roe Doctrine for the whole world.** [Author's note.] 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 227 

States, be obtained over these weaker nations which would 
in effect control their government." 

These and many other views as to the significance of the 
Monroe Doctrine show the varying forms in which the United 
States has stated its opposition to the permanent occupation 
of territory or acquisition of political control in the American 
hemisphere by non-American powers. It has seemed neces- 
sary to present these differing ideas of the Monroe Doctrine 
to show that it is not law and to show that, as a manifesta- 
tion of policy, it is not set forth in any single formula. 

As single nations and as groups of nations have policies 
which vary in different parts of the world, and as the con- 
flict of policies rather than the violation of established law 
is the frequent cause of international differences, it is evident 
that, if the League to Enforce Peace cannot provide any aid 
in case of conflict of policies, its function will be compara- 
tively restricted. The conflict of policy would rarely take a 
form which would make justiciable methods practicable as 
a means to settlement. 

This being the case, reference of such matters would be to 
the council of conciliation provided for in the second article 
of the platform of the League to Enforce Peace. The first 
article provides for justiciable questions and the second 
states : — 

All other questions arising between the signatories and not 
settled by negotiation shall be submitted to a council of concilia- 
tion for hearing, consideration and recommendation. 

Here it should be repeated that the League to Enforce Peace 
does not bind itself to carry out the recommendation which 
the council of conciliation may make but merely binds itself 
to see that no power goes to war over such a matter until 
the question has been submitted. 

The conflicts of policy would, in most cases, be settled 



228 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

by ordinary diplomatic negotiations between the parties 
concerned. Even the Hague Conventions of 1899 and of 
1907 for the Pacific Settlement of International Disputes, 
ratified by twenty-seven or more of the leading states of the 
world, provide that, "in case of serious disagreement or dis- 
pute, before an appeal to arms, the signatory powers agree 
to have recourse, as far as circumstances allow, to the good 
offices or mediation of one or more friendly powers" (Art. 2). 
The Convention of 1907 deems it "expedient and desirable 
that one or more powers, strangers to the dispute, should, on 
their own initiative," tender such good offices. The United 
States, however, in signing this Convention made reserva- 
tion that "nothing contained in this Convention shall be so 
construed as to require the United States of America to de- 
part from its traditional policy of not intruding upon, inter- 
fering with, or entangling itself in political questions or pol- 
icy or internal administration of any foreign state; nor shall 
anything contained in the said Convention be construed to 
imply a relinquishment by the United States of America of 
its traditional attitude toward purely American questions." 
The United States has, however, also within recent years, 
particularly since 1913, become a party to numerous trea- 
ties in which "the high contracting parties agree that all 
disputes between them, of every nature whatsoever, to the 
settlement of which previous arbitration treaties or agree- 
ments do not apply in their terms or are not applied in fact, 
shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have failed, 
be referred for investigation and report to an international 
commission"; and "they agree not to declare war or begin 
hostilities during such investigation and before the report is 
submitted." The report shall be presented in the maximum 
period of one year, but "the high contracting parties, by 
mutual accord, may shorten or extend this period." Some 
of these treaties are to remain effective for five years from 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 229 

the date of ratification and then till twelve months from 
notice of intention to terminate the treaty. These treaties 
have still some time to rmi. Plainly, therefore, the United 
States is bound already, possibly in some cases under the 
Hague Convention and certainly under these other treaties, 
of which there are a large number, to submit disputes even 
involving the Monroe Doctrine to a body which would meet 
the requirements of the platform of the League to Enforce 
Peace. These treaties are with France, Great Britain, and 
Russia, as well as vrith. other European States and wdth 
South and Central American States. The President, in pro- 
claiming these treaties, declares that he has "caused the 
said treaty to be made pubHc, to the end that the same and 
every article and clause thereof may be observed and ful- 
filled with good faith by the United States and by the citi- 
zens thereof." 

A dispute in regard to the Monroe Doctrine or involving 
its principles, whatever they may be, would surely be in- 
cluded in the agreement made by the United States to refer 
disputes "of every nature whatsoever" to an international 
commission for investigation and report. This principle has 
had endorsement by leaders in preceding Administrations 
as well as in the action upon these treaties by the present 
Administration, and is therefore not to be regarded as em- 
bodying partisan policies. The United States is already 
bound to act as regards the Monroe Doctrine in disputes 
which may arise with most states in a fashion in exact accord 
with the second article of the platform of the League to En- 
force Peace. The aim of the league is secured when the ques- 
tion which negotiation has been unable to settle is sub- 
mitted "for hearing, consideration and recommendation," 
and it makes little difference whether the body to which it 
is submitted is called an "international commission" or a 
"council of conciliation.'* 



230 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

If, then, the United States and thirty or more nations are 
already bound to the principle of the second article of the 
league's platform so far as the Monroe Doctrine and other 
matters are subjects of dispute, there would seem to be no 
reason for raising the question of the practicability of that 
part of the program at the present time. Its practicability 
has already been formally declared, and, as embodied in 
treaty provisions, is a part of the law of the land. 

Any further discussion as to the practicability of the ap- 
plication of the league's program to differences arising in 
regard to the Monroe Doctrine would involve the question 
as to whether treaties already made will be observed when 
put to the test. Put concretely, the question may be, will 
the United States, which has made treaties with certain 
states agreeing to submit to an international commission 
disputes "of every nature whatsoever," find it practicable 
to submit a dispute arising in regard to the Monroe Doctrine 
to such a commission, or will the United States disregard the 
treaty, and did the United States so intend in making the 
treaty. It is to be hoped, and it must be believed, that these 
treaties were made in good faith and that the parties to the 
treaties intend to observe their provisions. It has even been 
announced that the United States proposes to observe in 
principle toward other nations not parties to such treaties 
the conduct prescribed in these treaties. These treaties are 
called treaties for the "Advancement of Peace" and declare 
as their object "to contribute to the development of the 
spirit of universal peace" or "to serve the cause of general 
peace." Accordingly, the enforcement of these treaties is 
regarded by these states as at least desirable for the sake 
of peace. 

Under the general practice and law of nations the viola- 
tion of a treaty may be a just cause of war. If this be so, 
then it is particularly essential that treaties for "the de- 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 231 

velopment of the spirit of universal peace" be kept. It 
would seem to be a simple proposition that the greater the 
risk of violation of a treaty the less ready a state will be to 
violate the treaty. This principle generally prevails, though 
at times states disregard all risks. If there is behind a treaty 
the compelling force of the fact of a signed agreement and 
the physical resources of the other signatory only, the fact 
of the agreement seems often, even in modern times, to have 
had little weight, and the sole deterrent seems to have been 
the physical power which might be felt if the agreement was 
not observed. This has given rise to the maxim often quoted 
that "a treaty is as strong as the force behind it.*' There is 
undoubtedly some truth in the maxim. The program of 
the League to Enforce Peace proposes to adopt what is bene- 
ficial in the maxim and to put behind treaties a degree of 
force which weak states might by themselves be unable to 
command. If, under the provision by which the United 
States and other states have agreed to refer to an interna- 
tional commission all differences, there is a reservation as 
regards matters affecting the Monroe Doctrine, this reser- 
vation is not expressed or implied. 

There has been for many years evidence that treaties 
needed behind them some sanction. The one sanction which 
all nations recognize is that of force, whether it be economic, 
physical or other force. By the state which scrupulously 
observes its treaty engagements this force is never felt or 
feared. By the state that is not considerate of its treaty 
obligations this force is feared and may be felt. The state 
that proposed to observe its international obligations would 
seem to have almost a right to demand that it be secured 
against violation of its rights by a party which has agreed 
by treaty to observe them, particularly when the party 
which observes its international obligations has, in reliance 
upon the i»omise of the other party, pef sained from building 



232 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

up a force to inspire fear in that party. All that a state can 
reasonably demand is that its side of a controversy be heard 
and considered impartially. The League to Enforce Peace 
proposes to secure such hearing and consideration for both 
parties but beyond that does not propose to go, even if the 
subject of the controversy be the Monroe Doctrine. 

Further, it may be said if, when in dispute, the Monroe 
Doctrine as applied by the United States is not a policy upon 
which the United States is willing to await hearing, con- 
sideration and recommendation, then the United States has 
not acted in good faith in signing these recent treaties; and 
it may also be said, if the American policy as embodied in 
the Monroe Doctrine will not stand the test of investigation 
and consideration, that it is time for the United States to be 
determining why it should longer give to the doctrine its 
support. 

As the plan of the league for submission of controversies 
such as might arise over the Monroe Doctrine has, on the 
initiative of the United States, already been embodied in 
treaties with a greater part of the states of the world, such 
a plan cannot be regarded as impracticable without condem- 
nation of the judgment of those who are in control of the 
affairs of the world, and this judgment the League to Enforce 
Peace, having the well-being of the world in view, does not 
criticize and condenm, but supports and commends. 



THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE i 

WOODROW WILSON 

Gentlemen of the Senate : On the 18th of December last 
I addressed an identic note to the Governments of the na- 
tions now at war, requesting them to state, more definitely 
than they had yet been stated by either group of belHger- 
ents, the terms upon which they would deem it possible to 
make peace. I spoke on behalf of humanity and of the rights 
of all neutral nations like our own, many of whose most vital 
interests the war puts in constant jeopardy. 

The Central Powers united in a reply which stated merely 
that they were ready to meet their antagonists in confer- 
ence to discuss terms of peace. 

The Entente Powers have replied much more definitely, 
and have stated, in general terms, indeed, but with sufficient 
definiteness to imply details, the arrangements, guarantees, 
and acts of reparation which they deem to be the indispen- 
sable conditions of a satisfactory settlement. 

We are that much nearer a definite discussion of the peace 
which shall end the present war. We are that much nearer 
the discussion of the international concert which must there- 
after hold the world at peace. In every discussion of the 
peace that must end this war it is taken for granted that that 
peace must be followed by some definite concert of power, 
which will make it virtually impossible that any such catas- 
trophe should ever overwhelm us again. Every lover of 
mankind, every sane and thoughtful man, must take that 
for granted. 

** Address to the Senate, January J22, 1917. 



234 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

I have sought this opportunity to address you because I 
thought that I owed it to you, as the council associated with 
me in the final determination of our international obliga- 
tions, to disclose to you without reserve the thought and 
purpose that have been taking form in my mind in regard to 
the duty of our Government in those days to come when it 
will be necessary to lay afresh and upon a new plan the foun- 
dations of peace among the nations. 

It is inconceivable that the people of the United States 
should play no part in that great enterprise. To take part in 
such a service will be the opportunity for which they have 
sought to prepare themselves by the very principles and 
purposes of their polity and the approved practices of their 
Government, ever since the days when they set up a new 
nation in the high and honorable hope that it might in all 
that it was and did show mankind the way to liberty. They 
cannot, in honor, withhold the service to which they are now 
about to be challenged. They do not wish to withhold it. 
But they owe it to themselves and to the other nations of the 
world to state the conditions under which they will feel free 
to render it. 

That service is nothing less than this — to add their au- 
thority and their power to the authority and force of other 
nations to guarantee peace and justice throughout the world. 
Such a settlement cannot now be long postponed. It is 
right that before it comes this Government should frankly 
formulate the conditions upon which it would feel justified 
in asking our people to approve its formal and solemn ad- 
herence to a league for peace. I am here to attempt to state 
those conditions. 

The present war must first be ended, but we owe it to 
candor and to a just regard for the opinion of mankind to 
say that, so far as our participation in guarantees of future 
peace is^ concerned, it makes a great deal of difference in 



CONDITIONS OF PEACE 235 

what way and upon what terms it is ended. The treaties 
and agreements which bring it to an end must embody terms 
which will create a peace that is worth guaranteeing and 
preserving, a peace that will win the approval of mankind, 
not merely a peace that will serve the several interests and 
immediate aims of the nations engaged. 

We shall have no voice in determining what those terms 
shall be, but we shall, I feel sure, have a voice in determin- 
ing whether they shall be made lasting or not by the guaran- 
tees of a universal covenant, and our judgment upon what 
is fundamental and essential as a condition precedent to 
permanency should be spoken now, not afterward, when it 
may be too late. 

No covenant of cooperative peace that does not include 
the peoples of the new world can suffice to keep the future 
safe against war, and yet there is only one sort of peace that 
the peoples of America could join in guaranteeing. 

The elements of that peace must be elements that engage 
the confidence and satisfy the principles of the American 
Governments, elements consistent with their political faith 
and the practical conviction which the peoples of America 
have once for all embraced and undertaken to defend. 

I do not mean to say that any American Government 
would throw any obstacle in the way of any terms of peace 
the Governments now at war might agree upon, or seek to 
upset them when made, whatever they might be. I only 
take it for granted that mere terms of peace between the 
belligerents will not satisfy even the belligerents themselves. 
Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be 
absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guarantor 
of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than 
the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto 
formed or projected, that no nation, no probable combina- 
tion of nations, could face oi withstand it. If the peace pres- 



236 AMERICAN. FOREIGN POLICY 

ently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure 
by the organized major force of mankind. 

The terms of the immediate peace agreed upon will de- 
termine whether it is a peace for which such a guarantee can 
be secured. The question upon which the whole future peace 
and policy of the world depends is this : — 

Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace 
or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle 
for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can 
guarantee, the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? 
Only a tranquil Em-ope can be a stable Europe. There must 
be not only a balance of power, but a community of power; 
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace. 

Fortunately, we have received very explicit assurances on 
this point. The statesmen of both of the groups of nations, 
now arrayed against one another, have said, in terms that 
could not be misinterpreted, that it was no part of the pur- 
pose they had in mind to crush their antagonists. But the 
implication of these assurances may not be equally clear to 
all, may not be the same on both sides of the water. I think 
it will be serviceable if I attempt to set forth what we under- 
stand them to be. 

They imply, first of all, that it must be a peace without 
victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be 
permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it 
may be understood that no other interpretation was in my 
thought. I am seeking only to face realities and to face them 
without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace 
forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the van- 
quished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, 
at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resent- 
ment, a bitter memory, upon which terms of peace would 
rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. 
~ Only a peace between equals can last; only a peace the 



CONDITIONS OF PEACE 237 

very principle of which is equality and a common particip>a- 
tion in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right 
feeling, between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace 
as is the just settlement of vexed questions of territory or of 
racial and national allegiance. 

The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded, 
if it is to last, must be an equality of rights; the guarantees 
exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference be- 
tween big nations and small, between those that are power- 
ful and those that are weak. Right must be based upon the 
common strength, not upon the individual strength, of the 
nations upon whose concert peace will depend. 

Equality of territory, of resources, there, of course, cannot 
be; nor any other sort of equality not gained in the ordinary 
peaceful and legitimate development of the peoples them- 
selves. But no one asks or expects anything more than an 
equality of rights. Mankind is looking now for freedom of 
life, not for equipoises of power. 

And there is a deeper thing involved than even equality of 
rights among organized nations. No peace can last, or ought 
to last, which does not recognize and accept the principle 
that Governments derive all their just powers from the con- 
sent of the governed, and that no right anywhere exists to 
hand peoples about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if 
they were property. 

I take it for granted, for instance, if I may venture upon 
a single example, that statesmen everywhere are agreed that 
there should be a united, independent, and autonomous 
Poland, and that henceforth inviolable security of life, of 
worship, and of industrial and social development should be 
guaranteed to all peoples who have lived hitherto under the 
power of Governments devoted to a faith and purpose hostile 
to their own. 

I speak of this not because of any desire to exalt an ab- 



238 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

stfact political principle which Has always been held very 
dear by those who have sought to build up liberty in Amer- 
ica, but for the same reason that I have spoken of the other 
conditions of peace, which seem to me clearly indispensable 
— because I wish frankly to uncover realities. Any peace 
which does not recognize and accept this principle will in- 
evitably be upset. It will not rest upon the affections or the 
convictions of mankind. The ferment of spirit of whole popu- 
lations will fight subtly and constantly against it, and all the 
world will sympathize. The world can be at peace only if its 
life is stable, and there can be no stability where the will is in 
rebellion, where there is not tranquillity of spirit and a sense 
of justice, of freedom, and of right. 

So far as practicable, moreover, every great people now 
struggling toward a full development of its resources and of 
its powers should be assured a direct outlet to the great high- 
ways of the sea. Where this cannot be done by the cession 
of territory it can no doubt be done by the neutralization of 
direct rights of way under the general guarantee which will 
assure the peace itself. With a right comity of arrangement 
no nation need be shut away from free access to the open 
paths of the world's commerce. 

And the paths of the sea must alike in law and in fact be 
free. The freedom of the seas is the sine qua non of peace, 
equality, and cooperation. No doubt a somewhat radical 
reconsideration of many of the rules of international prac- 
tice hitherto sought to be established may be necessary in 
order to make the seas indeed free and common in practi- 
cally all circumstances for the use of mankind, but the mo- 
tive for such changes is convincing and compelling. There 
can be no trust or intimacy between the peoples of the world 
without them. 

The free, constant, unthreatened intercourse of nations 
is an essential part of the process of peace and of develop- 



CONDITIONS OF PEACE 239 

ment. It need not be difficult to define or to secure the fi^e- 
dom of the seas if the Governments of the world sincerely 
desire to come to an agreement concerning it. 

It is a problem closely connected with the Hmitation of 
naval armaments and the cooperation of the navies of the 
world in keeping the seas at once free and safe. 

And the question of limiting naval armaments opens the 
wider and perhaps more difficult question of the limitation of 
armies and of all programs of military preparation. Diffi- 
cult and delicate as those questions are, they must be faced 
with the utmost candor and decided in a spirit of real ac- 
commodation if peace is to come with healing in its wings 
and come to stay. 

Peace cannot be had without concession and sacrifice. 
There can be no sense of safety and equality among the 
nations if great preponderating armies are henceforth to 
continue here and there to be built up and maintained. The 
statesmen of the world must plan for peace and nations must 
adjust and accommodate their policy to it as they have 
planned for war and made ready for pitiless contest and 
rivalry. The question of armaments, whether on land or 
sea, is the most immediately and intensely practical ques- 
tion connected with the future fortunes of nations and of 
mankind. 

I have spoken upon these great matters without reserve 
and with the utmost explicitness because it has seemed to me 
to be necessary if the world's yearning desire for peace was 
anywhere to find free voice and utterance. Perhaps I am 
the only person in high authority among all the peoples of 
the world who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. 
I am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking also, 
of course, as the responsible head of a great Government, 
and I feel confident that I have said what the people of the 
United States would wish me to say. 



240 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

May I not add that I hope and believe that I am, in effect, 
speaking for liberals and friends of humanity in every nation 
and of every program of liberty? I would fain believe that 
I am speaking for the silent mass of mankind everywhere 
who have as yet had no place or opportunity to speak their 
real hearts out concerning the death and ruin they see to 
have come already upon the persons and the homes they 
hold most dear. 

And in holding out the expectation that the people and 
the Government of the United States will join the other 
civilized nations of the world in guaranteeing the perma- 
nence of peace upon such terms as I have named, I speak 
with the greater boldness and confidence because it is clear to 
every man who can think that there is in this promise no 
breach in either our traditions or om* policy as a nation, but 
a fulfillment rather of all that we have professed or striven 
for. 

I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with 
one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the 
doctrine of the world : That no nation should seek to extend 
its policy over any other nation or people, but that every 
people should be left free to determine its own policy, its 
own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, un- 
afraid, the little along with the great and powerful. 

I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid entan- 
gling alliances which would draw them into competition of 
power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and 
disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from with- 
out. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. 
When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same 
purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live 
their own lives under a common protection. 

I am proposing government by the consent of the gov- 
erned; that freedom of the seas which in international con- 



CONDITIONS OF PEACE 241 

f crence after conference representatives of the United States 
have urged with the eloquence of those who are the con- 
vinced disciples of liberty; and that moderation of arma- 
ments which makes of armies and navies a power for order 
merely, not an instrument of aggression or of selfish violence. 
These are American principles, American poHcies. We 
can stand for no others. And they are also the principles and 
policies of forward-looking men and women everywhere, 
of every modern nation, of every enlightened community. 
They are the principles of mankind and must prevail. 



WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE.* 
WOODROW WILSON 

^ Gentlemen of the Congress: I have called the Con- 
gress into extraordinary session because there are serious, 
very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made im- 
mediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally 
permissible that I should assume the responsibility of mak- 
ing. 

On the 3d of February last I oflBcially laid before you the 
extraordinary announcement of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment that on and after the first day of February it was 
its piu'pose to put aside all restraints of law or of humanity 
and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to 
approach either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or 
the western coasts of Europe or any of the ports controlled 
by the enemies of Germany within the Mediterranean. That 
had seemed to be the object of the German submarine war- 
fare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Im- 
perial Government had somewhat restrained the command- 
ers of its undersea craft, in conformity with its promise, then 
given to us, that passenger boats should not be sunk and 
that due warning would be given to all other vessels which 
its submarines might seek to destroy, when no resistance 
was offered or escape attempted, and care taken that their 
crews were given at least a fair chance to save their lives in 
their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and 
haphazard enough, as was proved in distressing instance 

* The War Message was read by the President before a joint session of 
the Senate and the House of Representatives, April 2, 1917. 



WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 243 

after instance in the progress of the cruel and unmanly busi- 
ness, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. 

The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels 
of every kind, whatever their flag, their character, their 
cargo, their destination, their errand, have been ruthlessly 
sent to the bottom without warning and without thought of 
help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neu- 
trals along with those of belligerents. Even hospital ships 
and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and stricken 
people of Belgium, though the latter were provided with 
safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German 
Government itself and were distinguished by unmistakable 
marks of identity, have been sunk with the same reckless 
lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things 
would in fact be done by any Government that had hitherto 
subscribed to humane practices of civilized nations. Inter- 
national law had its origin in the attempt to set up some law 
which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where 
no nation has right of dominion and where lay the free high- 
ways of the world. By painful stage after stage has that law 
been built up, with meagre enough results, indeed, after all 
was accomplished that could be accomplished, but always 
with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience 
of mankind demanded. 

This minimum of right the German Government has 
swept aside, under the plea of retaliation and necessity and 
because it had no weapons which it could use at sea except 
these, which it is impossible to employ, as it is employing 
them, without throwing to the wind all scruples of humanity 
or of respect for the understandings that were supposed to 
underlie the intercourse of the world. 

I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, 
immense and serious as that is, but only of the wanton and 



244 ' AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

wholesale destruction of the lives of noncombatants, men, 
women, and children, engaged in pm"suits which have al- 
ways, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been 
deemed innocent and legitimate. Property can be paid for; 
the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be. 

The present German submarine warfare against com- 
merce is a warfare against mankind. It is a war against 
all nations. American ships have been sunk, American lives 
taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn 
of, but the ships and people of other neutral and friendly 
nations have been sunk and overwhelmed in the waters in 
the same way. There has been no discrimination. The 
challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for 
itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for our- 
selves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a 
temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our 
motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. 
Our motive will not be revenge or the victorious assertion 
of the physical might of the Nation, but only the vindica- 
tion of right, of human right, of which we are only a single 
champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February 
last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral 
rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful 
interference, our right to keep our people safe against un- 
lawful violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is 
impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws, 
when used as the German submarines have been used against 
merchant shipping, it is imp)ossible to defend ships against 
their attacks, as the law of nations has assumed that mer- 
chantmen would defend themselves against privateers or 
cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is 
common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity, in- 
deed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown 



WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 345 

their own intention. They mus^ be dealt with upon sight, if 
dealt with at all. 

The German Government denies the right of neutrals to 
use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has pro- 
scribed, even in the defense of rights which no modern pub- 
licist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The 
intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have 
placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the 
pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. 
Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such cir- 
cumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse 
than ineffectual; it is likely only to produce what it was 
meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into 
the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of bellig- 
erents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are inca- 
pable of making: we will not choose the path of submission 
and suffer the most sacred rights of our Nation and our 
people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which 
we now array ourselves are not common wrongs; they cut to 
the very roots of human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical 
character of the step I am taking and of the grave respon- 
sibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to 
what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Con- 
gress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment to be in fact nothing less than war against the Gov- 
ernment and people of the United States; that it formally 
accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust 
upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put 
the country in a more thorough state of defense, but also to 
exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the 
Government of the German Empire to tertns and end the 
war. 

Wliat this will involve is elear. It will involve the utmost 



246 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

practicable cooperation in counsel and action with the GkjV* 
ernments now at war with Germany, and, as incident to that, 
the extension to those Governments of the most liberal 
financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as 
possible be added to theirs. 

It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the 
material resources of the country to supply the materials of 
war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most 
abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way 
possible. 

It will involve the immediate full equipment of the navy 
in all respects, but particularly in supplying it with the best 
means of dealing with the enemy's submarines. 

It will involve the immediate addition to the armed forces 
of the United States, already provided for by law in case of 
war, of at least five hundred thousand men who should, in my 
opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability 
to service, and also the authorization of subsequent addi- 
tional increments of equal force so soon as they may be 
needed and can be handled in training. 

It will involve also, of course, the granting of adequate 
credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they 
can equitably be sustained by the present generation, by 
well-conceived taxation. 

I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation, be- 
cause it seems to me that it would be most unwise to base the 
credits, which will now be necessary, entirely on money bor- 
rowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to protect 
our people, so far as we may, against the very serious hard- 
ships and evils which would be likely to arise out of the in- 
flation which would be produced by vast loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which these things are to 
be accomplished, we should keep constantly in mind the wis- 
dom of interfering as little as possible in our own prepara- 



WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 247 

tion and in the equipment of our own military forces with 
the duty — for it will be a very practical duty — of sup- 
plying the nations already at war with Germany with the 
materials which they can obtain only from us or by our as- 
sistance. They are in the field and we should help them in 
every way to be effective there. 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting, through the several 
executive departments of the Government, for the consider- 
ation of your committees, measures for the accomplishment 
of the several objects I have mentioned. I hop>e that it will be 
your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after 
very careful thought by the branch of the Government upon 
whom the responsibility of conducting the war and safe- 
guarding the Nation will most directly fall. 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, 
let us be very clear, and make very clear to all the world, what 
our motives and our objects are. My own thought has not 
been driven from its habitual and normal course by the un- 
happy events of the last two months, and I do not believe 
that the thought of the Nation has been altered or clouded 
by them. I have exactly the same things in mind now that I 
had in mind when I addressed the Senate on the 22d of 
January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed 
the Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of Feb- 
ruary. Our object now, as then, is to vindicate the principles 
of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish 
and autocratic power, and to set up among the really free 
and self -governed peoples of the world such a concert of pur- 
pose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of 
those principles. 

Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the 
peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peo- 
ples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the 
existence of autocratic Governments, backed by organized 



248 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the 
will of their people. We have seen the last of neutraUty in 
such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an age in 
which it will be insisted that the same standards of conduct 
and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among 
nations and their Governments that are observed among 
the individual citizens of civilized States. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no 
feeling toward them but one of sympathy and friendship. It 
was not upon their impulse that their Government acted in 
entering this war. It was not with their previous knowledge 
or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to 
be determined upon in the old, unhappy days, when peoples 
were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were pro- 
voked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little 
groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their 
fellowmen as pawns and tools. 

Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor States 
with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about some 
critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity 
to strike and make conquest. Such designs can be success- 
fully worked out only under cover and where no one has the 
right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived plans of decep- 
tion or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to 
generation, can be worked out and kept from the light only 
within the privacy of courts or behind the carefully guarded 
confidences of a narrow and privileged class. They are hap- 
pily impossible where public opinion commands and insists 
upon full information concerning all the Nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained ex- 
cept by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic 
Government could be trusted to keep faith within it or ob- 
serve its covenants. It must be a league of honor, a partner- 
ship of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plot- 



WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 249 

tings of inner circles who could plan what they would and 
render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its 
very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and 
their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests 
of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. 

Does not every American feel that assurance has been 
added to our hope for the future peace of the world by the 
wonderful and heartening things that have been happening 
within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known by 
those who knew it best to have been always in fact demo- 
cratic at heart, in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the 
intimate relationships of her people that spoke their natural 
instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. The autocracy 
that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as 
it had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was 
not in fact Russian in origin, character, or purpose; and now 
it has been shaken off and the great, generous Russian people 
have been added, in all their native majesty and might, to 
the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for 
justice, and for peace. Here is a fit partner for a league of 
honor. 

One of the things that has served to convince us that the 
Prussian autocracy was not and could never be our friend is 
that from the very outset of the present war it has filled our 
unsuspecting communities, and even our oflSces of govern- 
ment, with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot 
against our National unity of counsel, our peace within and 
without, our industries and our commerce. Indeed, it is now 
evident that its spies were here even before the war began; 
and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a fact 
proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues, which 
have more than once come perilously near to disturbing the 
peace and dislocating the industries of the country, have 
been carried on at the instigation, with the support, and 



250 AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY 

even under the personal direction of official agents of the Im- 
perial Government, accredited to the Government of the 
United States. 

Even in checking these things and trying to extirpate 
them we have sought to put the most generous interpreta- 
tion possible upon them because we knew that their source 
lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German 
people toward us (who were, no doubt, as ignorant of them 
as we ourselves were), but only in the selfish designs of a 
Government that did what it pleased and told its people 
nothing. But they have played their part in serving to con- 
vince us at last that the Government entertains no real 
friendship for us, and means to act against our peace and se- 
curity at its convenience. That it means to stir up enemies 
against us at our very doors the intercepted note to the Ger- 
man Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because 
we know that in such a Government, following such methods, 
we can never have a friend; and that in the presence of its 
organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish we 
know not what purpose, can be no assured security for the 
democratic Governments of the world. We are now about 
to accept the gage of battle with this natural foe to liberty 
and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation 
to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are 
glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense 
about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world 
and for the liberation of its peoples, the German people in- 
cluded; for the rights of nations, great and small, and the 
privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and 
of obedience. The world must be made safe for democracy. 
Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of 
political liberty. 

We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest. 



WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 251 

no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves; no 
material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely 
make. W^e are but one of the champions of the rights of 
mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been 
made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can 
make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish 
object, seeking nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish 
to share with all free peoples, we shall, I feel confident, con- 
duct our operations as belligerents without passion and our- 
selves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right 
and of fair play we profess to be fighting for. 

I have said nothing of the Governments allied with the 
Imperial Government of Germany because they have not 
made war upon us or challenged us to defend our right and 
our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, indeed, 
avowed its unqualified endorsement and acceptance of the 
reckless and lawless submarine warfare, adopted now with- 
out disguise by the Imperial German Government, and it 
has therefore not been possible for this Government to re- 
ceive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited 
to this Government by the Imperial and Royal Govern- 
ment of Austria-Hungary; but that Government has not 
actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United 
States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at 
least, of postponing a discussion of our relations with the 
authorities at Vienna. We enter this war only where we are 
clearly forced into it because there are no other means of 
defending our right. 

It will be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as bellig- 
erents in a high spirit of right and fairness because we act 
without animus, not with enmity toward a people or with 
the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, 
but only an armed opposition to an irresponsible Government 



252 AMERICAN FOREIGN POIJCY 

which has thrown aside all considerations of humanity and 
of right and is running amuck. 

We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German 
people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re- 
establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage 
between us, however hard it may be for them for the time 
being to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We 
have borne with their present Government through all these 
bitter months because of that friendship, exercising a pa- 
tience and forbearance which would otherwise have been 
impossible. 

We shall happily still have an opportunity to prove that 
friendship in our daily attitude and actions toward the mil- 
lions of men and women of German birth and native sympa- 
thy who live among us and share our life, and we shall be 
proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal to their 
neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test. They 
are most of them as true and loyal Americans as if they had 
never known any other fealty or allegiance. They will be 
prompt to stand with us in rebuking and restraining the 
few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there 
should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of 
stern repression; but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it 
only here and there and without countenance except from a 
lawless and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, gentlemen of the 
Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. 
There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacri- 
fice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peace- 
ful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of 
all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. 

But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall 
fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our 
hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to 



WAR FOR DEMOCRACY AND PEACE 253 

authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the 
rights and hberties of small nations, for a universal dominion 
of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace 
and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last 
free. 

To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
everything that we are and everything that we have, with 
the pride of those who know that the day has come when 
America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for 
the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the 
peace which she has treasured. 

God helping her, she can do no other. 



V 

FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 



TO OLD-WORLD CRITICS* 

WALT WHITMAN 

Here first the duties of to-day, the lessons of the concrete, 
Wealth, order, travel, shelter, products, plenty; 
As of the building of some varied, vast, perpetual edifice, 
Whence to arise inevitable in time, the towering roofs, the lamps, 
The solid-planted spires tall shooting to the stars. 

* Included in "Sands at Seventy," Leaves qf Orasa. Reprinted with the generous per- 
mission oi Mr. Horace Truubel. 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE i 

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE 

Whenever the political laws of the United States are to 
be discussed, it is with the doctrine of the sovereignty of 
the people that we must begin. 

The principle of the sovereignty of the people, which is to 
be found, more or less, at the bottom of almost all human 
institutions, generally remains concealed from view. It is 
obeyed without being recognized, or if for a moment it be 
brought to light, it is hastily cast back into the gloom of the 
sanctuary. 

*'The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which 
have been most profusely abused by the wily and the des- 
potic of every age. To the eyes of some it has been repre- 
sented by the venal suffrages of a few of the satellites of 
power; to others, by the votes of a timid or an interested 
minority; and some have even discovered it in the silence 
of a people, on the supposition that the fact of submission 
established the right of command. 

In America, the principle of the sovereignty of the people 
is not either barren or concealed, as it is with some other 
nations; it is recognized by the customs and proclaimed by 
the laws; it spreads freely, and arrives without impediment 
at its most remote consequences. If there be a country in 
the world where the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people 
can be fairly appreciated, where it can be studied in its ap- 

^ Tocqueville, after a two years' visit, described and interpreted the 
United States of his day in De la Democratie en Am6riquey 1835, from 
which this and the two following selections are taken. 



258 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

plication to the affairs of society, and where its dangers and 
its advantages may be foreseen, that country is assuredly 
America. 

I have already observed that, from their origin, the sov- 
ereignty of the people was the fundamental principle of the 
greater number of the British colonies in America. It was 
far, however, from then exercising as much influence on 
the government of society as it now does. Two obstacles, 
the one external, the other internal, checked its invasive 
progress. 

It could not ostensibly disclose itself in the laws of the 
colonies, which were still constrained to obey the mother- 
country; it was therefore obliged to spread secretly, and to 
gain ground in the provincial assemblies, and especially in 
the townships. 

American society was not yet prepared to adopt it with 
all its consequences. The intelligence of New England, and 
the wealth of the country to the south of the Hudson (as I 
have shown in the preceding chapter), long exercised a 
sort of aristocratic influence, which tended to limit the ex- 
ercise of social authority within the hands of a few. The 
public functionaries were not universally elected, and the 
citizens were not all of them electors. The electoral fran- 
chise was everywhere placed within certain limits, and made 
dependent on a certain qualification, which was exceedingly 
low in the north, and more considerable in the south. 

The American Revolution broke out, and the doctrine of 
the sovereignty of the people, which had been nurtured in 
the townships, took possession of the State; every class was 
enlisted in its cause; battles were fought, and victories ob- 
tained for it; until it became the law of laws. 

A scarcely less rapid change was effected in the interior of 
society, where the law of descent completed the abolition of 
local influences. 



THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE 259 

At the very time when this consequence of the laws and 
of the Revolution became apparent to every eye, victory 
was irrevocably pronounced in favor of the democratic 
cause. All power was, in fact, in its hands, and resistance 
was no longer possible. The higher orders submitted without 
a murmur and without a struggle to an evil which was thence- 
forth inevitable. The ordinary fate of falling powers awaited 
them; each of their several members followed his own in- 
terest; and as it was impossible to wring the power from the 
hands of a people which they did not detest suflficiently to 
brave, their only aim was to secure its good-will at any 
price. The most democratic laws were consequently voted 
by the very men whose interests they impaired; and thus, 
although the higher classes did not excite the passions of the 
people against their order, they accelerated the triumph 
of the new state of things; so that, by a singular change, the 
democratic impulse was found to be most irresistible in the 
very States where the aristocracy had the firmest hold. 

The State of Maryland, which had been founded by men 
of rank, was the first to proclaim universal suffrage, and to 
introduce the most democratic forms into the conduct of its 
government. 

When a nation modifies the elective qualification, it may 
easily be foreseen that sooner or later that qualification will 
be entirely abolished. There is no more invariable rule in the 
history of society: the farther electoral rights are extended, 
the more is felt the need of extending them; for after each 
concession the strength of the democracy increases, and its 
demands increase with its strength. The ambition of those 
who are below the appointed rate is irritated in exact propor- 
tion to the great number of those who are above it. The ex- 
ception at last becomes the rule, concession follows conces- 
sion, and no stop can be made short of universal suffrage. 

At the present day the principle of the sovereignty of the 



260 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

people has acquired, in the United States, all the practical 
development which the imagination can conceive. It is un- 
encumbered by those fictions which have been thrown over 
it in other countries, and it appears in every possible form 
according to the exigency of the occasion. Sometimes the 
laws are made by the people in a body, as at Athens; and 
sometimes its representatives, chosen by universal suffrage, 
transact business in its name, and almost under its immedi- 
ate control. 

In some countries a power exists which, though it is in a 
degree foreign to the social body, directs it, and forces it to 
pursue a certain track. In others the ruling force is divided, 
being partly within and partly without the ranks of the 
people. But nothing of the kind is to be seen in the United 
States; there society governs itself for itself. All power cen- 
ters in its bosom; and scarcely an individual is to be met 
with who would venture to conceive, or, still more, to ex- 
press, the idea of seeking it elsewhere. The Nation partici- 
pates in the making of its laws by the choice of its legislators, 
and in the execution of them by the choice of the agents of 
the Executive Government; it may almost be said to govern 
itself, so feeble and so restricted is the share left to the Ad- 
ministration, so little do the authorities forget their popular 
origin and the power from which they emanate. 



GENERAL TENDENCY OF THE LAWS 
ALEXIS DE TOCQXJEVILLE 

The defects and the weaknesses of a democratic govern- 
ment may very readily be discovered; they are demonstrated 
by the most flagrant instances, while its beneficial influence 
is less perceptibly exercised. A single glance suffices to de- 
tect its evil consequences, but its good qualities can only 
be discerned by long observation. The laws of the American 
democracy are frequently defective or incomplete; they 
sometimes attack vested rights, or give a sanction to others 
which are dangerous to the community; but even if they 
were good, the frequent changes which they undergo would 
be an evil. How comes it, then, that the American Repub- 
lics prosper and maintain their position? 

In the consideration of laws a distinction must be carefully 
observed between the end at which they aim and the means 
by which they are directed to that end; between their abso- 
lute and their relative excellence. If it be the intention of 
the legislator to favor the interests of the minority at the 
expense of the majority, and if the measures he takes are so 
combined as to accomplish the object he has in view with 
the least possible expense of time and exertion, the law may 
be well drawn up, although its purpose be bad; and the more 
efficacious it is, the greater is the mischief which it causes. 

Democratic laws generally tend to promote the weKare of 
the greatest possible number; for they emanate from a ma- 
jority of the citizens, who are subject to error, but who can- 
not have an interest opposed to their own advantage. The 
laws of an aristocracy tend, on the contrary, to concentrate 



262 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

wealth and power in the hands of the minority, because an 
aristocracy, by its very nature, constitutes a minority. It 
may therefore be asserted, as a general proposition, that the 
purpose of a democracy, in the conduct of it-s legislation, is 
useful to a greater number of citizens than that of an aris- 
tocracy. This is, however, the sum total of its advantages. 

Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of 
legislation than democracies ever can be. They are possessed 
of a self-control which protects them from the errors of a 
temporary excitement; and they form lasting designs which 
they mature with the assistance of favorable opportunities. 
Aristocratic government proceeds with the dexterity of art; 
it understands how to make the collective force of all its 
laws converge at the same time to a given point. Such is not 
the case with democracies, whose laws are almost always 
ineffective or inopportune. The means of democracy are 
therefore more imperfect than those of aristocracy, and the 
measures which it unwittingly adopts are frequently op- 
posed to its own cause; but the object it has in view is more 
useful. 

Let us now imagine a community so organized by nature, or 
by its constitution, that it can support the transitory action 
of bad laws, and that it can await, without destruction, the 
general tendency of the legislation: we shall then be able to 
conceive that a democratic government, notwithstanding its 
defects, will be most fitted to conduce to the prosperity of 
this community. This is precisely what has occurred in the 
United States; and I repeat, what I have before remarked, 
that the great advantage of the Americans consists in their 
being able to commit faults which they may afterward 
repair. 

An analogous observation may be made respecting public 
officers. It is easy to perceive that the American democracy 
frequently errs in the choice of the individuals to whom it en- 



GENERAL TENDENCY OF THE LAWS 263 

trusts the power of the Administration; but it is more diffi- 
cult to say why the State prospers under their rule. In the 
first place, it is to be remarked, that if in a democratic State 
the governors have less honesty and less capacity than else- 
where, the governed, on the other hand, are more enlight- 
ened and more attentive to their interests. As the people in 
democracies is more incessantly vigilant in its affairs, and 
more jealous of its rights, it prevents its representatives 
from abandoning that general line of conduct which its own 
interest prescribes. In the second place, it must be remem- 
bered that if the democratic magistrate is more apt to misuse 
his power, he possesses it for a shorter period of time. But 
there is yet another reason which is still more general and 
conclusive. It is no doubt of importance to the welfare of 
nations that they should be governed by men of talents and 
virtue; but it is perhaps still more important that the in- 
terests of those men should not differ from the interests of 
the community at large; for if such were the case, virtues of 
a high order might become useless, and talents might be 
turned to a bad account. 

I say that it is important that the interests of the persons 
in authority should not conflict with or oppose the interests 
of the community at large; but I do not insist upon their 
having the same interests as the whole population, because I 
am not aware that such a state of things ever existed in any 
country. 

No political form has hitherto been discovered, which is 
equally favorable to the prosperity and the development of 
all the classes into which society is divided. These classes 
continue to form, as it were, a certain number of distinct 
nations in the same nation; and experience has shown that it 
is no less dangerous to place the fate of these classes exclu- 
sively in the hands of any one of them, than it is to make one 
people the arbiter of the destiny of another. When the rich 



m4> FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

alone govern, the interest of the poor is always endangered; 
and when the poor make the laws, that of the rich incurs 
very serious risks. The advantage of democracy does not 
consist, therefore, as has been sometimes asserted, in favor- 
ing the prosperity of all, but simply in contributing to the 
well-being of the greatest possible number. 

The men who are entrusted with the direction of public 
affairs in the United States are frequently inferior, both in 
point of capacity and of morality, to those whom aristocratic 
institutions would raise to power. But their interest is iden- 
tified and confounded with that of the majority of their 
fellow-citizens. They may frequently be faithless, and fre- 
quently mistake; but they will never systematically adopt a 
line of conduct opposed to the will of the majority; and it is 
impossible that they should give a dangerous or an exclusive 
tendency to the Government. 

The maladministration of a democratic magistrate is a 
mere isolated fact, which only occurs during the short period 
for which he is elected. Corruption and incapacity do not 
act as common interests, which may connect men perma- 
nently with one another. A corrupt or an incapable magis- 
trate will not concert his measures with another magistrate, 
simply because that individual is as corrupt and as inca- 
pable as himself; and these two men will never unite their en- 
deavors to promote the corruption and inaptitude of their 
remote posterity. The ambition and manoeuvers of the one 
will serve, on the contrary, to unmask the other. The vices 
of a magistrate, in democratic States, are usually peculiar to 
his own person. 

But under aristocratic Governments public men are 
swayed by the interests of their order, which, if it is some- 
times confounded with the interests of the majority, is very 
frequently distinct from them. This interest is the common 
and lasting bond which unites them together; it induces 



GENERAL TENDENCY OF THE LAWS ^65 

them to coalesce, and to combine their efforts in order to 
attain an end which does not always ensure the greatest 
happiness of the greatest number; and it serves not only to 
connect the persons in authority, but to unite them to a con- 
siderable portion of the community, since a numerous body 
of citizens belongs to the aristocracy, without being invested 
with ofl&cial functions. The aristocratic magistrate is there- 
fore constantly supported by a portion of the community, 
as well as by the Government of which he is a member. 

The common purpose which connects the interest of the 
magistrates in aristocracies with that of a portion of their 
contemporaries, identifies it with that of future genera- 
tions; their influence belongs to the future as much as to the 
present. The aristocratic magistrate is urged at the same 
time toward the same point, by the passions of the commu- 
nity, by his own, and I may almost add, by those of his pos- 
terity. It is, then, wonderful that he does not resist such 
repeated impulses. ^^ And, indeed, aristocracies are often car- 
ried away by the spirit of their order without being corrupted 
by it; and they unconsciously fashion society to their own 
ends, and prepare it for their own descendants. 

The English aristocracy is perhaps the most liberal which 
ever existed, and no body of men has ever, uninterruptedly, 
furnished so many honorable and enlightened individuals to 
the government of a country. It cannot, however, escape 
observation, that in the legislation of England the good of 
the poor has been sacrificed to the advantage of the rich, 
and the rights of the majority to the privileges of the few. 
The consequence is, that England, at the present day, com- 
bines the extremes of fortune in the bosom of her society; 
and her perils and calamities are almost equal to her power 
and her renown. 

In the United States, where the public oflScers have no in- 
terests to promote connected with their caste,the general and 



266 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

constant influence of the Government is beneficial, although 
the individuals who conduct it are frequently unskillful and 
sometimes contemptible. There is, indeed, a secret tendency 
in democratic institutions to render the exertions of the citi- 
zens subservient to the prosperity of the community, not- 
withstanding their private vices and mistakes; while in 
aristocratic institutions there is a secret propensity, which, 
notwithstanding the talents and the virtues of those who con- 
duct the Government, leads them to contribute to the evils 
which oppress their fellow-creatures. In aristocratic Gov- 
ernments public men may frequently do injuries which they 
do not intend; and in democratic States they produce ad- 
vantages which they never thought of. 



THE ACTIVITY OF THE BODY POLITIC 
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE 

On passing from a country in which free institutions are 
estabhshed to one where they do not exist, the traveler is 
struck by the change; in the former all is bustle and activity, 
in the latter everything is calm and motionless. In the one, 
melioration and progress are the general topics of inquiry; 
in the other, it seems as if the community only aspired to 
repose in the enjoyment of the advantages which it has 
acquired. Nevertheless, the country which exerts itself so 
strenuously to promote its welfare is generally more wealthy 
and more prosperous than that which appears to be so con- 
tented with its lot; and when we compare them together, we 
can scarcely conceive how so many new wants are daily felt 
in the former, while so few seem to occur in the latter. 

If this remark is appHcable to those free countries in 
which monarchical and aristocratic institutions subsist, it 
is still more striking with regard to democratic republics. In 
these States it is not only a portion of the people which is 
busied with the melioration of its social condition, but the 
whole community is engaged in the task; and it is not the 
exigencies and the convenience of a single class for which a 
provision is to be made, but the exigencies and the conven- 
ience of all ranks of life. 

It is not impossible to conceive the surpassing liberty 
which the Americans enjoy; some idea may likewise be 
formed of the extreme equality which subsists among them; 
but the political activity which pervades the United States 
must be seen in order to be understood. No sooner do you 



268 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

set foot upon the American soil than you are stunned by a 
kind of tumult; a confused clamor is heard on every side; 
a thousand simultaneous voices demand the immediate 
satisfaction of their social wants. Everything is in motion 
around you; here, the people of one quarter of a town are 
met to decide upon the building of a church; there, the elec- 
tion of a representative is going on; a little farther, the dele- 
gates of a district are posting to the town in order to consult 
upon some local improvements; or, in another place, the 
laborers of a village quit their ploughs to deliberate upon 
the project of a road or a public school. Meetings are called 
for the sole purpose of declaring their disapprobation of the 
line of conduct pursued by the Government; while in other 
assemblies the citizens salute the authorities of the day as 
the fathers of their country. Societies are formed which re- 
gard drunkenness as the principal cause of the evils under 
which the State labors, and which solemnly bind themselves 
to give a constant example of temperance. 

The great political agitation of the American legislative 
bodies, which is the only kind of excitement that attracts the 
attention of foreign countries, is a mere episode or a sort of 
continuation of that universal movement which originates 
in the lowest classes of the people and extends successively 
to all the ranks of society. It is impossible to spend more 
efforts in the pursuit of enjoyment. 

The cares of political life engross a most prominent place 
in the occupation of a citizen in the United States; and al- 
most the only pleasure of which an American has any idea, 
is to take a part in the Government, and to discuss the part 
he has taken. This feeling pervades the most trifling habits 
of life; even the women frequently attend public meetings, 
and listen to political harangues as a recreation after their 
household labors. Debating clubs are to a certain extent a 
substitute for theatrical entertainments: an American can- 



THE ACTIVITY OF THE BODY POLITIC 269 

not converse, but he can discuss; and when he attempts to 
talk he falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he 
were addressing a meeting; and if he should warm in the 
course of the discussion, he will infallibly say, ** Gentlemen,** 
to the person with whom he is conversing. 

In some countries the inhabitants display a certain repug- 
nance to avail themselves of the political privileges with 
which the law invests them; it would seem that they set too 
high a value upon their time to spend it on the interests of 
the community; and they prefer to withdraw within the 
exact limits of a wholesome egotism, marked out by four 
sunk fences and a quickset hedge. But if an American were 
condemned to confine his activity to his own affairs, he 
would be robbed of one half of his existence; he would feel an 
immense void in the life which he is accustomed to lead, and 
his wretchedness would be unbearable. I am persuaded that 
if ever a despotic government is established in America, it 
will find it more diflicult to surmount the habits which free 
institutions have engendered than to conquer the attach- 
ment of the citizens to freedom. 

This ceaseless agitation which democratic government 
has introduced into the political world, influences all social 
intercourse. I am not sure that upon the whole this is not 
the greatest advantage of democracy; and I am much less 
inclined to applaud it for what it does than for what it causes 
to be done. 

It is incontestable that the people frequently conducts 
public business very ill; but it is impossible that the lower 
orders should take a part in pubhc business without extend- 
ing the circle of their ideas, and without quitting the ordi- 
nary routine of their mental acquirements. The humblest 
individual who is called upon to cooperate in the govern- 
ment of society, acquires a certain degree of self-respect; 
and as he possesses authority, he can command the services 



270 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

of minds much more enlightened than his own. He is can- 
vassed by a multitude of applicants, who seek to deceive him 
in a thousand different ways, but who instruct him by their 
deceit. He takes a part in political undertakings which did 
not originate in his own conception, but which give him a 
taste for undertakings of the kind. New mehorations are 
daily pointed out in the property which he holds in common 
with others, and this gives him the desire of improving that 
property which is more peculiarly his own. He is perhaps 
neither happier nor better than those who came before him, 
but he is better informed and more active. I have no doubt 
that the democratic institutions of the United States, joined 
to the physical constitution of the country, are the cause (not 
the direct, as is so often asserted, but the indirect cause) of 
the prodigious commercial activity of the inhabitants. It 
is not engendered by the laws, but the people learns how to 
promote it by the experience derived from legislation. 

When the opponents of democracy assert that a single 
individual performs the duties which he undertakes much 
better than the government of the community, it appears to 
me that they are perfectly right. The government of an in- 
dividual, supposing an equality of instruction on either side, 
is more consistent, more persevering, and more accurate 
than that of a multitude, and it is much better qualified 
judiciously to discriminate the characters of the men it em- 
ploys. If any deny what I advance, they have certainly never 
seen a democratic government, or have formed their opinion 
upon very partial evidence. It is true that even when local 
circumstances and the disposition of the people allow demo- 
cratic institutions to subsist, they never display a regular 
and methodical system of government. Democratic liberty 
is far from accomplishing all the projects it undertakes, with 
the skill of an adroit despotism. It frequently abandons 
them before they have borne their fruits, or risks them 



THE ACTIVITY OF THE BODY POLITIC 271 

when the consequences may prove dangerous; but in the 
end it produces more than any absolute government, and 
if it do fewer things well, it does a great number of things. 
Under its sway, the transactions of the pubhc administra- 
tion are not nearly so important as what is done by private 
exertion. Democracy does not confer the most skillful kind of 
government upon the people, but it produces that which the 
most skillful governments are frequently unable to awaken, 
namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a super- 
abundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, 
and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the 
most amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of 
democracy. 

In the present age, when the destinies of Christendom 
seem to be in suspense, some hasten to assail democracy as 
its foe while it is yet in its early growth; and others are ready 
with their vows of adoration for this new duty which is 
springing forth from chaos; but both parties are very im- 
perfectly acquainted with the object of their hatred or of 
their desires; they strike in the dark, and distribute their 
blows by mere chance. 

We must first understand what the purport of society and 
the aim of government are held to be. If it be your intention 
to confer a certain elevation upon the human mind, and to 
teach it to regard the things of this world with generous 
feelings; to inspire men with a scorn of mere temporal ad- 
vantage; to give birth to living convictions, and to keep 
alive the spirit of honorable devotedness; if you hold it to 
be a good thing to refine the habits, to embellish the manners, 
to cultivate the arts of a nation, and to promote the love of 
poetry, of beauty, and of renown; if you would constitute a 
people not unfitted to act with power upon all other nations; 
nor unprepared for those high enterprises, which, whatever 
be the result of its efforts, will leave a name forever famous 



272 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

in time — if you believe such to be the principal object of 
society, you must avoid the government of democracy, 
which would be a very uncertain guide to the end you have 
in view. 

But if you hold it to be expedient to divert the moral and 
intellectual activity of man to the production of comfort, 
and to the acquirement of the necessaries of life; if a clear 
understanding be more profitable to men than genius; if 
your object be not to stimulate the virtues of heroism, but 
to create habits of peace; if you had rather behold vices 
than crimes, and are content to meet with fewer noble deeds, 
provided offenses be diminished in the same proportion; if, 
instead of living in the midst of a brilliant state of society, 
you are contented to have prosperity around you; if, in short, 
you are of opinion that the principal object of a government 
is not to confer the greatest possible share of power and of 
glory upon the body of the nation, but to insure the greatest 
degree of enjoyment, and the least degree of misery, to each 
of the individuals who compose it — if such be your desires, 
you can have no surer means of satisfying them than by 
equaUzing the condition of men, and estabhshing democratic 
institutions. 

But if the time be past at which such a choice was possi- 
ble, and if some superhuman power impel us toward one or 
the other of these two governments without consulting our 
wishes, let us at least endeavor to make the best of that 
which is allotted to us; and let us so inquire into its good and 
its evil propensities as to be able to foster the former, and 
repress the latter to the utmost. 



THE GERMAN AND THE AMERICAN 
TEMPER 1 

KUNO FRANCKE 

Perhaps the most fundamental, or shall I say elementary, 
difference between the German temper and the American 
may be expressed by the word "slowness." Is there any pos- 
sible point of view from which slowness might appear to an 
American as something desirable? I think not. Indeed, to 
call a thing or a person slow seems to spread about them 
an atmosphere of complete and irredeemable hopelessness. 
Compare with this the reverently sturdy feelings likely to 
be aroused in a German breast by the words langsam und 
feierlich inscribed over a religious or patriotic hymn, and im- 
agine a German Mannerchor singing such a hymn, with all 
the facial and tonal symptoms of joyful and devout slowness 
of cerebral activity — and you have in brief compass a spec- 
imen-demonstration of the difference in tempo in which the 
two national minds habitually move. 

It has been said that the langsamer Schritt of the German 
military drill was in the last resort responsible for the 
astounding victories which in 1870 shook the foundations 
of Imperial France. Similarly, it might be said that slowness 
of movement and careful deliberateness are at the bottom of 

1 As a native German and an American citizen and patriot, Professor 
Francke is peculiarly fitted to recognize the merits and defects of both the 
German and the American temper. The article from which these extracts 
are derived — "German Literature and the American Temper," printed 
in the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1914, and again in The German Spirit, 
1916 — was written in the spring preceding the outbreak of war. It is here 
reprinted through the generous permission of Henry Holt & Co. 



274 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

most things in which Germans have excelled. To be sure, 
the most recent development of Germany, particularly in 
trade and industry, has been most rapid, and the whole of 
German life of to-day is thoroughly American in its desire for 
getting ahead and for working under high pressure. But this 
is a condition forced upon Germany from without through 
international competition and the exigencies of the world- 
market rather than springing from the inner tendency of 
German character itself. And it should not be forgotten that 
it was the greatest German of modern times, Goethe, who, 
anticipating the present era of speed, uttered this warning: 
"Railways, express posts, steamships, and all possible fa- 
cilities for swift communication, — these are the things in 
which the civilized world is now chiefly concerned, and by 
which it will over-civilize itself and arrive at mediocrity." . . . 

A striking consequence of this difference of tempo in which 
the American mind and the German naturally move, and 
perhaps the most conspicuous example of the practical effect 
of this difference upon National habits, is the German regard 
for authority and the American dislike of it. For the slower 
circulation in the brain of the German makes him more pas- 
sive and more easily inclined to accept the decisions of others 
for him, while the self-reliant and agile American is instinc- 
tively distrustful of any decision which he has not made 
himself. 

Here, then, is another sharp distinction between the two 
National tempers, another serious obstacle to the just appre- 
ciation of the German spirit by the American. 

I verily believe that it is impossible for an American to 
understand the feelings which a loyal German subject, 
particularly of the conservative sort, entertains toward the 
State and its authority. That the State should be anything 
more than an institution for the protection and safeguarding 
of the happiness of individuals; that it might be considered 



THE GERMAN AND THE AMERICAN TEMPER 275 

as a spiritual, collective personality, leading a life of its own, 
beyond and above the life of individuals; that service for the 
State, therefore, or the position of a state official, should be 
considered as something essentially different from any other 
kind of useful employment, — these are thoughts utterly for- 
eign to the American mind, and very near and dear to the 
heart of a German. The American is apt to receive an order 
or a communication from a public official with feelings 
of suspicion and with a silent protest; the German is apt 
to feel honored by such a communication and fancy him- 
seK elevated thereby to a position of some public import- 
ance. 

The American is so used to thinking of the police as the 
servant, and mostly a very poor servant, of his private affairs, 
that on placards forbidding trespassing upon his grounds 
he frequently adds an order, "Police take notice"; the Ger- 
man, especially if he does not look particularly impressive 
himself, will think long before he makes up his mind to ap- 
proach one of the impressive-looking Schutzleute to be found 
at every street corner, and deferentially ask him the time of 
day. The American dislikes the uniform as an embodiment 
of irksome discipline and subordination, he values it only as 
a sort of holiday outfit and for parading purposes; to the 
German the "King's Coat" is something sacrosanct and in- 
violable, an embodiment of highest national service and 
highest national honor. . . . 

Closely allied with this German sense of authority, and 
again in sharp contrast with American feeling, is the Ger- 
man distrust of the average man. In order to realize the 
fundamental polarity of the two National tempers in this 
respect also, one need only think of the two great represent- 
atives of American and German political life in the nine- 
teenth century: Lincoln and Bismarck. Lincoln in every 
fiber of his being a son of the people, an advocate of the com- 



276 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

mon man, an ideal type of the Lest instincts of the masses, 
a man who could express with the simplicity of a child his 
ineradicable belief in the essential right-mindedness of the 
plain folk. Bismarck with every pulse-beat of his heart the 
chivalric vassal of his imperial master; the invincible cham- 
pion of the monarchical principle; the caustic scorner of the 
crowd; the man who, whenever he notices symptoms in the 
crowd that he is gaining popularity with it, becomes sus- 
picious of himself and feels inclined to distrust the justice 
of his own cause; the merciless cynic who characterizes the 
futile oratorical efforts of a silver-tongued political oppo- 
nent by the crushing words, "He took me for a mass 
meeting.'* 

But not only the political life of the two countries presents 
this difference of attitude toward the average man. The 
great German poets and thinkers of the last century were 
all of them aristocrats by temper. Goethe, Schiller, Kant, 
ScheUing, Hegel, the Romanticists, Heine, Schopenhauer, 
Wagner, Nietzsche — is there a man among them who would 
not have begged off from being classed with the advocates of 
common sense or being called a spokesman of the masses? 
What a difference from two of the most characteristically 
American men of letters, Walt Whitman and Emerson: the 
one consciously and purposely a man of the street, glorying, 
one might say boastfully, in his comradeship with the crud- 
est and roughest of tramps and dock-hands; the other a 
philosopher of the field, a modern St. Francis, a prophet of 
the homespun, an inspired interpreter of the ordinary, — 
perhaps the most enlightened apostle of democracy that 
ever lived. Is it not natural that a people which, although 
wath varying degrees of confidence, acknowledges such men 
as Lincoln, Walt Whitman, and Emerson as the spokes- 
men of its convictions on the value of the ordinary intellect, 
should on the whole have no instinctive sympathy with a 



THE GERMAN AND THE AMERICAN TEMPER 277 

people whose intellectual leaders are men like Bismarck, 
Goethe, and Richard Wagner? 

To be sure, there is another, a democratic side to German 
life, and this side naturally appeals to Americans. But Ger- 
man democracy is still in the making, it has not yet achieved 
truly great things, it has not yet found a truly great expo- 
nent either in politics or in literature. In literature its influ- 
ence has exhausted itself largely, on the one hand, in biting 
satire of the ruling classes, such as is practiced to-day most 
successfully by the contributors to Simplizissimus and similar 
papers, sympathizing with Socialism; on the other hand, in 
idyllic representations of the healthy primitiveness of peas- 
ant life and the humble contentedness and respectability of 
the artisan class, the small tradespeople and subaltern ofl5- 
cials — I am thinking, of course, of such sturdy and charm- 
ing stories of provincial Germany as have been written by 
Wilhelm Raabe, Fritz Renter, Peter Rosegger, and Heinrich 
Seidel. It may be that all these men have been paving the 
way for that great epoch of German democracy; it may be 
that some time there will arise truly constructive minds that 
will unite the whole of the German people in an irresistible 
movement for popular rights, which would give the average 
man the same dominating position which he enjoys in this 
country. But clearly this time has not yet come. In Ger- 
many, expert training still overrules common sense and dilet- 
tanteism. 

The German distrust of the average intellect has for its 
logical counterpart another National trait which it is hard 
for Americans to appreciate — the German bent for vague 
intuitions of the infinite. It seems strange in this age of cold 
observation of facts, when the German scientist and the Ger- 
man captain of industry appear as the most striking embodi- 
ments of National greatness, to speak of vague intuitions of 
the infinite as a German characteristic. Yet throughout the 



278 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

centuries this longing for the infinite has been the source of 
much of the best and much of the poorest in German in- 
tellectual achievements. From this longing for the infinite 
sprang the deep inwardness and spiritual fervor which im- 
part such a unique charm to the contemplative thought of 
the German Mystics of the fourteenth century. In this 
longing for the infinite lay Luther's greatest inspiration and 
strength. It was the longing for the infinite which Goethe 
felt when he made his Faust say, — 

" The thrill of awe is man's best quality." 

This longing for the infinite was the very soul of German 
Romanticism; and all its finest conceptions, the Blue Flower 
of Novalis, Fichte's Salvation by the Will, Hegel's Self-revela- 
tion of the Idea, Schopenhauer's Redemption from the Willy 
Nietzsche's Revaluation of all Values, are nothing but ever 
new attempts to find a body for this soul. 

But while there has thus come a great wealth of inspira- 
tion and moral idealism from this German bent for reveling 
in the infinite, there has also come from it one of the great- 
est National defects: German vagueness, German lack of 
form, the lack of sense for the shape and proportion of finite 
things. Here, then, we meet with another discrepancy be- 
tween the American and the German character. For nothing 
is more foreign to the American than the mystic and the 
vague, nothing appeals more to him than what is clear-cut, 
easy to grasp, and well proportioned; he cultivates *'good 
form " for its own sake, not only in his social conduct, but 
also in his literary and artistic pursuits, and he usually at- 
tains it easily and instinctively, often at the expense of the 
deeper substance. To the German, on the contrary, form is a 
problem. He is principally absorbed in the subject-matter, 
the idea, the inner meaning; he struggles to give this subject- 
matter, this inner meaning, an adequate outer form; and he 



THE GERMAN AND THE AMERICAN TEMPER 279 

often fails. To comfort himself, he has invented a technical 
term designed to cover up his failure: he falls back on the 
"inner form" of his productions. . . . 

I have reserved for the last place in this review of differ- 
ences of German and American temper another trait inti- 
mately connected with the German craving for the infinite; 
I give the last place to the consideration of this trait, because 
it seems to me the most un-American of all. I mean the pas- 
sion for seK-surrender. 

I think I need not fear any serious opposition if I designate 
self-possession as the cardinal American virtue, and con- 
sequently as the cardinal American defect also. It is impos- 
sible to imagine that so unmanly a proverb as the German — 

" Wer niemals einen Rausch gekabt 
Der ist kein rechter Mann " — 

should have originated in New England or Ohio. But it is 
impossible also to conceive that the author of Werihers Lei- 
den should have obtained his youthful impressions and in- 
spirations in New York City. ^'Conatus sese conservandi 
unicum virtutis fundamentum" — this Spinozean motto 
may be said to contain the essence of the American deca- 
logue of conduct. Always be master of yourself; never be- 
tray any irritation, or disappointment, or any other weak- 
ness; never slop over; never give yourself away; never make 
yourself ridiculous — what American would not admit that 
these are foremost among the rules by which he would like 
to regulate his conduct? 

It can hardly be denied that this habitual self-mastery, 
this habitual control over one's emotions, is one of the chief 
reasons why so much of American life is so uninteresting 
and so monotonous. It reduces the number of opportuni- 
ties for intellectual friction, it suppresses the manifestation 
of strong individuality, often it impoverishes the inner life 



280 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

itself. But, on the other hand, it has given the American 
that sureness of motive, that healthiness of appetite, that 
boyish frolicsomeness, that purity of sex-instincts, that 
quickness and litheness of manners, which distinguish him 
from most Europeans; it has given to him all those qualities 
which insure success and make their possessor a welcome 
member of any kind of society. 

If, in contradistinction to this fundamental American 
trait of self-possession, I designate the passion for self-sur- 
render as perhaps the most significant expression of National 
German character, I am well aware that here again, I have 
touched upon the gravest defects as well as the highest vir- 
tues of German National life. 

The deepest seriousness and the noblest loyalty of Ger- 
man character is rooted in this passion. 

" Sich hinzugeben ganz und eine Wonne 
Zu fiihlen die ewig sein muss, 
Ewig, ewig'* — 

that is German sentiment of the most unquestionable sort. 
Not only do the great names in German history — as Luther, 
Lessing, Schiller, Bismarck, and so many others — stand in 
a conspicuous manner for this thoroughly German devotion, 
this absorption of the individual in some great cause or prin- 
ciple, but countless unnamed men and women are equally 
typical representatives of this German virtue of self -surren- 
der: the housewife whose only thought is for her family; 
the craftsman who devotes a lifetime of contented obscurity 
to his daily work; the scholar who foregoes official and social 
distinction in unremitting pursuit of his chosen inquiry; the 
official and the soldier, who sink their personality in unques- 
tioning service to the State. 

But a German loves not only to surrender himseK to a 
great cause or a sacred task, he equally loves to surrender 
himself to whims. He loves to surrender to feelings, to hys- 



THE GERMAN AND THE AMERICAN TEMPER 281 

terias of all sorts; he loves to merge himself in vague and 
formless imaginings, in extravagant and reckless experience, 
in what he likes to call "Hving himself out." And thus this 
same passion for self-surrender which has produced the 
greatest and noblest types of German earnestness and de- 
votion, has also led to a number of paradoxical excrescences 
and grotesque distortions of German character. Nobody is 
more prone to forget his better self in this so-called *' living 
himself out" than the German. Nobody can be a cruder 
materialist than the German who has persuaded himself 
that it is his duty to unmask the "lie of idealism." Nobody 
can be a more relentless destroyer of all that makes life beau- 
tiful and lovely, nobody can be a more savage hater of 
rehgious beliefs, of popular tradition, of patriotic instincts, 
than the German who has convinced himself that by the 
uprooting of all these things he performs the sacred task of 
saving society. 



THE "DIVINE AVERAGE"! 
G. LOWES DICKINSON 

The great countries of the East have each a civilization 
that is original, if not independent. India, China, Japan, 
each has a peculiar outlook on the world. Not so America, 
at any rate in the north. America, we might say, does not 
exist; there exists instead an offshoot of Europe. Nor does 
an "American spirit'* exist; there exists instead the spirit 
of the average Western man. Americans are immigrants 
and descendants of immigrants. Putting aside the negroes 
and a handful of Orientals, there is nothing to be found here 
that is not to be found in Western Europe; only here what 
thrives is not what is distinctive of the different European 
countries, but what is common to them all. What America 
does, not, of course, in a moment, but with incredible rapid- 
ity, is to obliterate distinctions. The Scotchman, the Irish- 
man, the German, the Scandinavian, the Italian, even, I 
suppose, the Czech, drops his costume, his manner, his 
language, his traditions, his beliefs, and retains only his 
common Western humanity. Transported to this continent 
all the varieties developed in Europe revert to the original 
type, and flourish in unexampled vigor and force. It is not 
a new type that is evolved; it is the fundamental type, grow- 
ing in a new soil, in luxuriant profusion. Describe the aver- 
age Western man and you describe the American; from east 
to west, from north to south, everywhere and always the 
same — masterful, aggressive, unscrupulous, egotistic, at 
once good-natured and brutal, kind if you do not cross him, 

^ Appearances, part iv, chapter i. Reprinted through the generous per- 
mission of the author and of Doubleday, Page & Co. 



THE "DIVINE AVERAGE" 283 

ruthless if you do, greedy, ambitious, self-reliant, active for 
the sake of activity, intelligent and unintellectual, quick- 
witted and crass, contemptuous of ideas but amorous of de- 
vices, valuing nothing but success, recognizing nothing but 
the actual, Man in the concrete, undisturbed by spiritual 
life, the master of methods and slave of things, and there- 
fore the conqueror of the world, the unquestioning, the un- 
doubting, the child with the muscles of a man, the European 
stripped bare, and shown for what he is, a predatory, unre- 
flecting, naif, precociously accomplished brute. 

One does not then find in America anything one does not 
find in Europe; but one finds in Europe what one does not 
find in America. One finds, as well as the average, what 
is below and what is above it. America has, broadly speak- 
ing, no waste products. The wreckage, everywhere evident 
in Europe, is not evident there. Men do not lose their self-re- 
spect, they win it; they do not drop out, they work in. This 
is the great result not of American institutions or ideas, but 
of American opportunities. It is the poor immigrant who 
ought to sing the praises of this continent. He alone has the 
proper point of view; and he, unfortunately, is dumb. But 
often, when I have contemplated with dreary disgust, in 
the outskirts of New York, the hideous, wooden shanties 
planted askew in wastes of garbage, and remembered Naples 
or Genoa or Venice, suddenly it has been borne in upon me 
that the Italians living there feel that they have their feet 
on the ladder leading to paradise; that for the first time they 
have before them a prospect and a hope; and that while they 
have lost, or are losing, their manners, their beauty, and 
their charm, they have gained something which, in their 
eyes, and perhaps in reality, more than compensates for 
losses they do not seem to feel, they have gained self-respect, 
independence, and the allure of the open horizon. *'The vi- 
sion of America," a friend writes, "is the vision of the lifting 



284 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

up of the millions. " This, I believe, is true, and it is Amer- 
ica's great contribution to civilization. I do not forget it; 
but neither shall I dwell upon it; for though it is, I suppose, 
the most important thing about America, it is not what I 
come across in my own experience. What strikes more often 
and more directly home to me is the other fact that Amer- 
ica, if she is not burdened by masses lying below the average, 
is also not inspired by an elite rising above it. Her distinc- 
tion is the absence of distinction. No wonder Walt Whit- 
man sang the "Divine Average." There was nothing else in 
America for him to sing. But he should not have called it 
divine; he should have called it "human, all too human." 

Or is it divine? Divine somehow in its potentialities? 
Divine to a deeper vision than mine? I was writing this at 
Brooklyn, in a room that looks across the East River to New 
York. And after putting down those words, "human, all 
too human," I stepped out on to the terrace. Across the 
gulf before me went shooting forward and back interminable 
rows of fiery shuttles; and on its surface seemed to float 
blazing basilicas. Beyond rose into the darkness a dazzling 
tower of light, dusking and shimmering, primrose and green, 
up to a diadem of gold. About it hung galaxies and constel- 
lations, outshining the firmament of stars; and all the air 
was full of strange voices, more than human, ingeminating 
Babylonian oracles out of the bosom of night. This is New 
York. This it is that the average man has done, he knows 
not why; this is the symbol of his work, so much more than 
himself, so much more than what seems to be itself in the 
common light of day. America does not know what she is 
doing, neither do I know, nor any man. But the impulse 
that drives her, so mean and poor to the critic's eye, has per- 
haps more significance in the eye of God; and the optimism 
of this continent, so seeming-frivolous, is justified, may be, 
by reason lying beyond its ken. 



THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT ^ 
JAMES BRYCE 

The account which has been so far given of the working 
of the American Government has been necessarily an ac- 
count rather of its mechanism than of its spirit. Its practical 
character, its temper and color, so to speak, largely depend 
on the party system by which it is worked, and on what may 
be called the political habits of the people. These will be de- 
scribed in later chapters. Here, however, before quitting the 
study of the constitutional organs of government, it is well 
to sum up the criticisms we have been led to make, and to 
add a few remarks, for which no fitting place could be found 
in preceding chapters, on the general features of the National 
Government. 

I. No part of the Constitution cost its framers so much 
time and trouble as the method of choosing the President. 
They saw the evils of a popular vote. They saw also the ob- 
jections to placing in the hands of Congress the election of 
a person whose chief duty it was to hold Congress in check. 
The plan of having him selected by judicious persons, spe- 
cially chosen by the people for that purpose, seemed to meet 
both difficulties, and was therefore recommended with con- 
fidence. The Presidential electors have, however, turned 
out mere ciphers, and the President is practically chosen 
by the people at large. The only importance which the 
elaborate machinery provided in the Constitution retains, 
is that it prevents a simple popular vote in which the 
majority of the Nation should prevail, and makes the 

^ The American Commonwealth (Revised Edition), part i, chapter xxvi. 
Reprinted through the generous permission of The Macmillan Company. 



986 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

issue of the election turn on the voting in certain "pivotal" 
States. 

II. The choice of the President, by what is now practically 
a simultaneous popular vote, not only involves once in every 
four years a tremendous expenditure of energy, time, and 
money, but induces of necessity a crisis which, if it happens 
to coincide with any passion powerfully agitating the people, 
may be dangerous to the Commonwealth. 

III. There is always a risk that the result of a Presiden- 
tial election may be doubtful or disputed on the ground of 
error, fraud, or violence. When such a case arises, the diffi- 
culty of finding an authority competent to deal with it, and 
likely to be trusted, is extreme. Moreover, the question 
may not be settled until the preexisting Executive has, by 
effluxion of time, ceased to have a right to the obedience of 
the citizens. The experience of the election of 1876 illustrates 
these dangers. Such a risk of interregna is incidental to all 
systems, monarchic or republican, which make the execu- 
tive head elective, as witnesses the Romano-Germanic 
Empire of the Middle Ages, and the Papacy. But it is more 
serious where he is elected by the people than where, as in 
France and Switzerland, he is chosen by the Chambers. 

IV. The change of the higher executive officers, and of 
many of the lower executive officers also, which usually takes 
place once in four years, gives a jerk to the machinery, and 
causes a discontinuity of policy, unless, of course, the Presi- 
dent has served only one term, and is reelected. Moreover, 
there is generally a loss either of responsibility or of efficiency 
in the executive chief magistrate during the last part of his 
term. An outgoing President may possibly be a reckless 
President, because he has little to lose by misconduct, little 
to hope from good conduct. He may therefore abuse his 
patronage, or gratify his whims with impunity. But more 
often he is a weak President. He has little influence with 



THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 2S7 

Congress, because his patronage will soon come to an end, 
little hold on the people, who are already speculating on the 
policy of his successor. His Secretary of State may be un- 
able to treat boldly with foreign powers, who perceive that 
he has a diminished influence in the Senate, and know that 
the next secretary may have different views. 

The question whether the United States, which no doubt 
needed a President in 1789 to typify the then created politi- 
cal unity of the Nation, might not now dispense with one, has 
never been raised in America, where the people, though dis- 
satisfied with the method of choice, value the office because 
it is independent of Congress and directly responsible to the 
people. Americans condemn any plan under which, as lately 
befell in France, the legislature can drive a President from 
power and itself proceed to choose a new one. 

V. The Vice-President's office is ill-conceived. His only 
ordinary function is to act as chairman of the Senate, but as 
he does not appoint the committees of that House, and has 
not even a vote (except a casting vote) in it, this function is 
of little moment. If, however, the President dies, or becomes 
incapable of acting, or is removed from office, the Vice- Pres- 
ident succeeds to the Presidency. What is the result? The 
place being in itself unimportant, the choice of a candidate 
for it excites little interest, and is chiefly used by the party 
managers as a means of conciliating a section of their party. 
It becomes what is called "a complimentary nomination." 
The man elected Vice-President is therefore rarely if ever a 
man then in the front rank. But when the President dies 
during his term of office, which has happened to five out of 
the twenty Presidents, this possibly second-class man steps 
into a great place for which he was never intended. Some- 
times, as in the case of Mr. Arthur, he fills the place respect- 
ably. Sometimes, as in that of Andrew Johnson, he throws 
the country into confusion. 



288 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

He is aut nullus aut Ccesar, 

VI. The defects in the structure and working of Congress, 
and in its relations to the Executive, have been so fully 
dwelt on already that it is enough to refer summarily to 
them. They are — 

The discontinuity of Congressional policy. 

The want of adequate control over officials. 

The want of opportunities for the Executive to influence 
the Legislature. 

The want of any authority charged to secure the passing 
of such legislation as the country needs. 

The frequency of disputes between three coordinate 
powers, the President, the Senate, and the House. 

The maintenance of a continuous policy is a difficulty in 
all popular governments. In the United States it is specially 
so, because — 

The Executive head and his Ministers are necessarily 
(unless when a President is reelected) changed once 
every four years. 

One House of Congress is changed every two years. 

Neither House recognizes permanent leaders. 

No accord need exist between Congress and the Executive. 

There may not be such a thing as a party in power, in 
the European sense of the term, because the party to which 
the Executive belongs may be in a minority in one or both 
Houses of Congress, in which case it cannot do anything 
which requires fresh legislation, — may be in a minority in 
the Senate, in which case it can take no administrative act 
of importance. 

There is little true leadership in political action, because 
the most prominent man has no recognized party authority. 
Congress was not elected to support him. He cannot threaten 
disobedient followers with a dissolution of Parliament like 
an English Prime Minister. He has not even the French 



THE FRAJME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 289 

President's right of dissolving the House with the consent 
of the Senate. 

There is often no general and continuous Cabinet policy, 
because the Cabinet has no authority over Congress, may 
perhaps have no influence with it. 

There is no general or continuous legislative policy, be- 
cause the legislature, having neither recognized leaders, nor 
a guiding committee, acts through a large number of com- 
mittees, independent of one another, and seldom able to 
bring their measures to maturity. ^Vhat continuity exists is 
due to the general acceptance of a few broad maxims, such 
as that of non-intervention in the affairs of the Old World, 
and to the fact that a large nation does not frequently or 
lightly change its views upon leading principles. In minor 
matters of legislation there is little settled policy, for the 
Houses trifle with questions, take them up in one session and 
drop them the next, seem insensible to the duty of complet- 
ing work once begun, and are too apt to yield to the pressure 
which sections, or even influential individuals in their con- 
stituencies, exert upon them to arrest some measure the 
public interest demands. Neither is there any security that 
Congress will attend to such defects in the administrative 
system of the country as may need a statute to correct them. 
In Europe the daily experience of the administrative de- 
partments discloses faults or omissions in the law which 
involve needless trouble to oflScials, needless cost to the 
treasury, needless injustice to classes of the people. Some- 
times for their own sakes, sometimes from that desire to see 
things well done which is the life breath of a good public 
servant, the permanent oflBcials call the attention of their 
parliamentary chief, the minister, to the defective state of 
the law, and submit to him the draft of a bill to amend it. 
He brings in this bill, and if it involves no matter of political 
controversy (which it rarely does), he gets it passed. As an 



290 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

American Minister has no means (except by the favor of a 
committee) of getting anything he proposes attended to by 
Congress, it is a mere chance if such amending statutes as 
these are introduced or pass into law. And it sometimes 
happens that when he sees the need for an improvement he 
cannot carry it, because selfish interests oppose it, and he 
has not that command of a majority by means of which a 
European minister is able to effect reforms. 

These defects are all reducible to two. There is an excessive 
friction in the American system, a waste of force in the strife 
of various bodies and persons created to check and balance 
one another. There is a want of executive unity, and there- 
fore a possible want of executive vigor. Power is so much 
subdivided that it is hard at a given moment to concentrate 
it for prompt and effective action. In fact, this happens 
only when a distinct majority of the people are so clearly of 
one mind that the several coordinate organs of government 
obey this majority, uniting their efforts to serve its will. 

VII. The relations of the people to the legislature are in 
every free country so much the most refined and delicate, 
as well as so much the most important part of the whole 
scheme and doctrine of government, that we must not ex- 
pect to find perfection anywhere. But comparing America 
with Great Britain since 1832, the working of the representa- 
tive system in America seems somewhat inferior. 

There are four essentials to the excellence of a representa- 
tive system : — 

That the representatives shall be chosen from among the 
best men of the country, and, if possible, from its natural 
leaders. 

That they shall be strictly and palpably responsible to 
their constituents for their speeches and votes. 

That they shall have courage enough to resist a momen- 
tary impulse of their constituents which they think mis- 



THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 291 

chievous; i.e.. shall be representatives rather than mere 
delegates. 
That they individually, and the chamber they form, shall 
have a reflex action on the people; i.e., that while they 
derive authority from the people, they shall also give 
the people the benefit of the experience they acquire in 
the chamber, as well as of the superior knowledge and 
capacity they may be presumed to possess. 
Americans hold, and no doubt correctly, that of these 
four requisities, the first, third, and fourth are not attained 
in their country. Congressmen are not chosen from among 
the best citizens. They mostly deem themselves mere dele- 
gates. They do not pretend to lead the people, being, indeed, 
seldom specially qualified to do so. 

That the second requisite, responsibility, is not fully real- 
ized seems surprising in a democratic country, and indeed 
almost inconsistent with that conception of the representa- 
tive as a delegate, which is supposed, perhaps erroneously, 
to be characteristic of democracies. Still the fact is there. 
One cause, already explained, is to be found in the com- 
mittee system. Another is the want of organized leadership 
in Congress. In Europe, a member's responsibility takes the 
form of his being bound to support the leader of his party on 
all important divisions. In America, this obligation attaches 
only when the party has "gone into caucus," and there re- 
solved upon its course. Not having the right to direct, the 
leader cannot be held responsible for the action of the rank 
and file. As a third cause we may note the fact that owing 
to the restricted competence of Congress many of the ques- 
tions which chiefly interest the voter do not come before 
Congress at all, so that its proceedings are not followed with 
the close and keen attention which the debates and divisions 
of European chambers excite, and some may think that a 
fourth cause is found in the method by which candidates for 



292 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

membership of Congress are selected. That method is de- 
scribed in later chapters. Its effect has been to make Con- 
gressmen (including Senators) be, and feel themselves to be, 
the nominees of the party organizations rather than of the 
citizens, and thus it has interposed what may for some pur- 
poses be called a sort of non-conducting medium between 
the people and their representatives. 

In general the reciprocal action and reaction between the 
electors and Congress, what is commonly called the "touch" 
of the people with their agents, is not suflficiently close, 
quick, and delicate. Representatives ought to give light and 
leading to the people, just as the people give stimulus and 
momentum to their representative. This incidental merit 
of the parliamentary system is among its greatest merits. 
But in America the action of the voter fails to tell upon Con- 
gress. He votes for a candidate of his own party, but he does 
not convey to that candidate an impulse toward the carry- 
ing of particular measures, because the candidate when in 
Congress will be practically unable to promote those meas- 
ures, unless he happens to be placed on the committee to 
which they are referred. Hence the citizen, when he casts his 
ballot, can seldom feel that he is advancing any measure or 
policy, except the vague and general policy indicated in his 
party platform. He is voting for a party, but he does not 
know what the party will do, and for a man, but a man 
whom chance may deprive of the opportunity of advocat- 
ing the measiu-es he cares most for. 

Conversely, Congress does not guide and illuminate its 
constituents. It is amorphous, and has little initiative. It 
does not focus the light of the Nation, does not warm its im- 
agination, does not dramatize principles in the deeds and 
characters of men. This happens because, in ordinary 
times, it lacks great leaders, and the most obvious cause why 
it lacks them, is its disconnection from the Executive. As it 



THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 293 

is often devoid of such men, so neither does the country ha- 
bitually come to it to look for them. In the old days, neither 
Hamilton, nor Jefferson, nor John Adams; in later days, 
neither Stanton, nor Grant, nor Tilden, nor Cleveland, nor 
Roosevelt, ever sat in Congress. Lincoln sat for two years 
only, and owed little of his subsequent eminence to his 
career there. 

VIII. The independence of the Judiciary, due to its hold- 
ing for life, has been a conspicuous merit of the Federal 
system, as compared with the popular election and short 
terms of judges in most of the States. Yet even the Federal 
Judiciary is not secure from the attacks of the two other 
powers, if combined. For the Legislature may by statute 
increase the number of Federal Justices, increase it to any 
extent, since the Constitution leaves the number undeter- 
mined, and the President may appoint persons whom he 
knows to be actuated by a particular political bias, perhaps 
even prepared to decide specific questions in a particular 
sense. Thus he and Congress together may obtain such a 
judicial determination of any constitutional question as 
they join in desiring, even although that question has been 
heretofore differently decided by the Supreme Court. The 
only safeguard is in the disapproval of the people. 

It is worth remarking that the points in which the Ameri- 
can frame of National Government has proved least suc- 
cessful are those which are most distinctly artificial; i.e., 
those which are not the natural outgrowth of old institu- 
tions and well-formed habits, but devices consciously in- 
troduced to attain specific ends. The election of the Presi- 
dent and Vice-President by electors appointed ad hoc is such 
a device. The functions of the Judiciary do not belong to 
this category; they are the natural outgrowth of the com- 
mon-law doctrines and of the previous histories of the colo- 
nies and States; all that is novel in them, for it can hardly 



294 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

be called artificial, is the creation of courts coextensive with 
the sphere of the National Government. 

All the main features of American Government may be de- 
duced from two principles. One is the sovereignty of the 
people, which expresses itself in the fact that the supreme 
law — the Constitution — is the direct utterance of their 
will, that they alone can amend it, that it prevails against 
every other law, that whatever powers it does not delegate 
are deemed to be reserved to it, that every power in the 
State draws its authority, whether directly, like the House 
of Representatives, or in the second degree, like the Presi- 
dent and the Senate, or in the third degree, like the Fed- 
eral Judiciary, from the people, and is legally responsible 
to the people, and not to any one of the other powers. 

The second principle, itself a consequence of this first one, 
is the distrust of the various organs and agents of Govern- 
ment. The States are carefully safeguarded against aggres- 
sion by the Central Government. So are the individual 
citizens. Each organ of Government, the Executive, the 
Legislature, the Judiciary, is made a jealous observer and re- 
strainer of the others. Since the people, being too numerous, 
cannot directly manage their affairs, but must commit them 
to agents, they have resolved to prevent abuses by trusting 
each agent as little as possible, and subjecting him to the 
oversight of other agents, who will harass and check him if 
he attempts to overstep his instructions. 

Some one has said that the American Government and 
Constitution are based on the theology of Calvin and the 
philosophy of Hobbes. This at least is true, that there is a 
hearty Puritanism in the view of human nature which per- 
vades the instrument of 1787. It is the work of men who 
believed in original sin, and were resolved to leave open 
for transgressors no door which they could possibly shut. 
Compare this spirit with the enthusiastic optimism of the 



THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 295 

Frenchmen of 1789. It is not merely a difference of race 
temperaments; it is a difference of fundamental ideas. 

With the spirit of Puritanism there is blent a double por- 
tion of the spirit of legahsm. Not only is there no rehance 
on ethical forces to help the Government to work; there is 
an elaborate machinery of law to preserve the equilibrium 
of each of its organs. The aim of the Constitution seems to 
be not so much to attain great common ends by securing a 
good government as to avert the evils which will flow, not 
merely from a bad government, but from any government 
strong enough to threaten the preexisting communities or 
the individual citizen. 

The spirit of 1776, as it speaks to us from the Declaration 
of Independence and the glowing periods of Patrick Henry, 
was largely a revolutionary spirit, revolutionary in its faith 
in abstract principles, revolutionary also in its determina- 
tion to carry through a tremendous political change in re- 
spect of grievance which the calm judgment of history does 
not deem intolerable, and which might probably have been 
redressed by less trenchant methods. But the spirit of 1787 
was an English spirit, and therefore a conservative spirit, 
tinged, no doubt, by the hatred to tyranny developed in the 
revolutionary struggle, tinged also, by the nascent dislike to 
inequahty, but in the main an English spirit, which desired 
to walk in the old paths of precedent, which thought of gov- 
ernment as a means of maintaining order and securing to 
every one his rights, rather than as a great ideal power, 
capable of guiding and developing a nation's life. And thus, 
though the Constitution of 1789 represented a great advance 
on the still oligarchic system of contemporary England, it 
was yet, if we regard simply its legal provisions, the least 
democratic of democracies. Had the points which it left 
undetermined, as for instance the qualifications of congres- 
sional electors, been dealt with in an aristocratic spirit, had 



296 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

the legislation of Congress and of the several States taken 
an aristocratic turn, it might have grown into an aristocratic 
system. The democratic character which it now possesses is 
largely the result of subsequent events, which have changed 
the conditions under which it had to work, and have de- 
livered its development into the hands of that passion for 
equality which has become a powerful factor in the modern 
world everywhere. 

He who should desire to draw an indictment against the 
American scheme of government might make it a long one, 
and might for every count in it cite high American authority 
and adduce evidence from American history. Yet a Eu- 
ropean reader would greatly err were he to conclude that 
this scheme of government is a failure, or is, indeed, for the 
purpose of the country, inferior to the political system of any 
of the great nations of the Old World. 

All governments are faulty; and an equally minute analy- 
sis of the Constitution of England, or France, or Germany 
would disclose mischiefs as serious, relatively to the prob- 
lems with which those states have to deal, as those we have 
noted in the American system. To any one familiar with 
the practical working of free governments it is a standing 
wonder that they work at all. The first impulse of mankind 
is to follow and obey; servitude rather than freedom is their 
natural state. With freedom, when it emerges among the 
more progressive races, there come dissension and faction; 
and it takes many centuries to form those habits of com- 
promise, that love of order, and that respect for public 
opinion which make democracy tolerable. What keeps a 
free government going is the good sense and patriotism of 
the people, or of the guiding class, embodied in usages and 
traditions which it is hard to describe, but which find, in 
moments of diflSculty, remedies for the inevitable faults of 
the system. Now, this good sense and that power of sub- 



THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 297 

ordinating sectional to national interests which we call 
patriotism, exist in higher measure in America, than in any 
of the great states of Europe. And the United States, more 
than any other country, are governed by public opinion, 
that is to say, by the general sentiment of the mass of the 
nation, which all the organs of the National Government 
and of the State Governments look to and obey. 

A philosopher from Jupiter or Saturn who should examine 
the Constitution of England or that of America would prob- 
ably pronounce that such a body of complicated devices, full 
of opportunities for conflict and deadlock, could not work 
at all. Many of those who examined the American Constitu- 
tion when it was launched did point to a multitude of dif- 
ficulties, and confidently predicted its failure. Still more 
confidently did the European enemies of free government de- 
clare in the crisis of the War of Secession that "the republi- 
can bubble had burst." Some of these censures were well 
grounded, though there were also defects which had escaped 
criticism, and were first disclosed by experience. But the 
Constitution has lived on in spite of all defects, and seems 
stronger now than at any previous epoch. 

Every Constitution, like every man, has "the defects of 
its good qualities." If a nation desires perfect stability, it 
must put up with a certain slowness and cumbrousness; it 
must face the possibility of a want of action where action is 
called for. If, on the other hand, it seeks to obtain executive 
speed and vigor by a complete concentration of power, it 
must run the risk that that power will be abused and irrev- 
ocable steps too hastily taken. " The liberty-loving people 
of every country," says Judge Cooley, "take courage from 
American freedom, and find augury of better days for them- 
selves from American prosperity. But America is not so 
much an example in her liberty as in the covenanted and en- 
during securities which are intended to prevent liberty de- 



298 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

generating into license, and to establish a feeling of trust 
and repose under a beneficent government, whose excellence, 
so obvious in its freedom, is still more conspicuous in its 
carefid provision for permanence and stability." Those 
faults on which I have laid stress, the waste of power by 
friction, the want of unity and vigor in the conduct of 
affairs by Executive and Legislature, are the price which the 
Americans pay for the autonomy of their States, and for the 
permanence of the equilibrium among the various branches 
of their Government. They pay this price willingly, because 
these defects are far less dangerous to the body politic than 
they would be in a European country. Take, for instance, 
the shortcomings of Congress as a legislative authority. 
Every European country is surrounded by difficulties which 
legislation must deal with, and that promptly. But in 
America, where those relics of mediaeval privilege and in- 
justice that still cumber most parts of the Old World either 
never existed, or were long ago abolished, where all the con- 
ditions of material prosperity exist in ample measure, and 
the development of material resources occupies men's minds, 
where nearly all social reforms lie within the sphere of State 
action, — in America there has generally been less desire 
than in Europe for a perennial stream of Federal legislation. 
People are contented if things go on fairly well as they are. 
Political philosophers, or philanthropists, perceive not a 
few improvements which Federal statutes might effect, but 
the mass of the Nation has not greatly complained and the 
wise see Congress so often on the point of committing mis- 
chievous errors that they do not deplore the barrenness of 
session after session. 

Every European State has to fear not only the rivalry but 
the aggression of its neighbors. Even Britain, so long safe in 
her insular home, has lost some of her security by the growth 
of steam navies, and has in her Indian and colonial posses- 



THE FRAME OF NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 299 

sions given pledges to Fortune all over the globe. She, like 
the powers of the European continent, must maintain her 
system of government in full efficiency for war as well as for 
peace, and cannot afford to let her armaments decline, her 
finances become disordered, the vigor of her Executive au- 
thority be impaired, sources of internal discord continue to 
prey upon her vitals. But America has lived in a world of 
her own, ipsa suis pollens opibus, nihil indigna nostri. Safe 
from attack, safe even from menace, she hears from afar the 
warring cries of European races and faiths, as the gods of 
Epicurus listened to the murmurs of the unhappy earth 
spread out beneath their golden dwellings, 

" Sejuncta a rebus nostris remotaque longe." 

Had Canada or Mexico growTi to be a great power, had 
France not sold Louisiana, or had England, rooted on the 
American continent, become a military despotism, the 
United States could not indulge the easy optimism which 
makes them tolerate the faults of their Government. As it 
is, that which might prove to a European State a mortal dis- 
ease is here nothing worse than a teasing ailment. Since the 
War of Secession ended, no serious danger has arisen either 
from within or from without to alarm transatlantic states- 
men. Social convulsions from within, warlike assaults from 
without, seem now as unlikely to try the fabric of the Amer- 
ican Constitution as an earthquake to rend the walls of the 
Capitol. This is why the Americans submit, not merely pa- 
tiently but hopefully, to the defects of their Government. 
The vessel may not be any better built, or found, or rigged 
than are those which carry the fortunes of the great nations 
of Europe. She is certainly not better navigated. But for 
the present, at least — it may not always be so — she sails 
upon a summer sea. 

It must never be forgotten that the main object which 
the framers of the Constitution set before themselves has 



300 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

been achieved. When Sieyes was asked what he had done 
during the Reign of Terror, he answered, "I lived." The 
Constitution as a whole has stood and stands unshaken. 
The scales of power have continued to hang fairly even. The 
President has not corrupted and enslaved Congress: Con- 
gress has not paralyzed and cowed the President. The legis- 
lative may have sometimes appeared to be gaining on the 
executive department ; but there are also times when the 
people support the President against the Legislature, and 
when the Legislature are obliged to recognize the fact. Were 
George Washington to return to earth, he might be as great 
and useful a President as he was more than a century ago. 
Neither the Legislature nor the Executive has for a moment 
threatened the liberties of the people. The States have not 
broken up the Union, and the Union has not absorbed the 
States. No wonder that the Americans are proud of an in- 
strument under which this great result has been attained, 
which has passed unscathed through the furnace of civil war, 
which has been found capable of embracing a body of Com- 
monwealths more than three times as numerous, and with 
twenty fold the population of the original States, which has 
cultivated the political intelligence of the masses to a point 
reached in no other country, which has fostered and been 
found compatible with a larger measure of local self-govern- 
ment than has existed elsewhere. Nor is it the least of its 
merits to have made itself beloved. Objections may be 
taken to particular features, and these objections point, as 
most American thinkers are agreed, to practical improve- 
ments which would preserve the excellences and remove some 
of the inconveniences. But reverence for the Constitution has 
become so potent a conservative influence, that no proposal 
of fundamental change seems likely to be entertained. And 
this reverence is itself one of the most wholesome and hope- 
ful elements in the character of the American people. 



CRITICISM OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM i 
JAMES BRYCE 

All Americans have long been agreed that the only possi- 
ble form of government for their country is a Federal one. 
All have perceived that a centralized system would be inex- 
pedient, if not unworkable, over so large an area, and have 
still more strongly felt that to cut up the continent into ab- 
solutely independent States would not only involve risks of 
war but injure commerce, and retard in a thousand ways the 
material development of every part of the country. But re- 
garding the nature of the Federal tie that ought to exist 
there have been keen and frequent controversies, dormant 
at present, but which might break out afresh should there 
arise a new question of social or economic change capable of 
bringing the powers of Congress into collision with the wishes 
of any State or group of States. The general suitability to 
the country of a Federal system is therefore accepted, and 
need not be discussed. I pass to consider the strong and 
weak points of that which exists. 

The faults generally charged on federations as compared 
with unified governments are the following: — 

1. Weakness in the conduct of foreign affairs. 

2. Weakness in home government, that is to say, deficient 

authority over the component States and the indi- 
vidual citizens. 

3. Liability to dissolution by the secession or rebellion 

of States. 

4. Liability to division into groups and factions by the 

^ The American Commonwealth (Revised Edition), part i, chapter xxix. 
Reprinted through the generous permission of The Macmillan Company. 



302 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

formation of separate combinations of the compo- 
nent States. 

5. Want of uniformity among the States in legislation 

and administration. 

6. Trouble, expense, and delay due to the complexity of a 

double system of legislation and administration. 

The first four of these are all due to the same cause, viz., 
the existence within one government, which ought to be able 
to speak and act in the name and with the united strength 
of the Nation, of distinct centers of force, organized political 
bodies into which part of the Nation's strength has flowed, 
and whose resistance to the will of the majority of the whole 
Nation is likely to be more effective than could be the re- 
sistance of individuals, because such bodies have each of 
them a government, a revenue, a militia, a local patriotism 
to unite them, whereas individual recalcitrants, however 
numerous, would be unorganized, and less likely to find a 
legal standing ground for opposition. The gravity of the 
first two of the four alleged faults has been exaggerated by 
most writers, who have assumed, on insuflacient grounds, 
that Federal Governments are necessarily weak. Let us, 
however, see how far America has experienced such troubles 
from these features of a Federal system. 

I. In its early years, the Union was not successful in the 
management of its foreign relations. Few popular Govern- 
ments are, because a successful foreign policy needs in a 
world such as ours conditions which popular Govern- 
ments seldom enjoy. In the days of Adams, Jefferson, and 
Madison, the Union put up with a great deal of ill-treatment 
from France as well as from England. It drifted rather than 
steered into the War of 1812. The conduct of that war was 
hampered by the opposition of the New England States. 
The Mexican War of 1846 was due to the slaveholders; but 
as the combination among the Southern leaders which 



CRITICISM OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 803 

entrapped the Nation into that conflict might have been 
equally successful in a unified country, the blame need not be 
laid at the door of Federalism. The principle of abstention 
from Old World complications has been so heartily and con- 
sistently adhered to that the capacities of the Federal sys- 
tem for the conduct of foreign affairs have been seldom seri- 
ously tried, so far as concerned European powers; and the 
likelihood of any danger from abroad is so slender that it may 
be practically ignored. But when a question of external 
policy arises which inter^ts only one part of the Union 
(such for instance as the immigration of Asiatic laborers), 
the existence of States feeling themselves specially affected 
is apt to have a strong and probably an unfortunate influ- 
ence. Only in this way can the American Government be 
deemed likely to suffer in its foreign relations from its 
Federal character. 

II. For the purposes of domestic government the Federal 
authority is now, in ordinary times, sufficiently strong. How- 
ever, as was remarked in the last chapter, there have been oc- 
casions when the resistance of even a single State disclosed 
its weakness. Had a man less vigorous than Jackson occu- 
pied the Presidential chair in 1832, South Carolina would 
probably have prevailed against the Union. In the Kansas 
troubles of 1855-56 the National Executive played a sorry 
part; and even in the resolute hands of President Grant it 
was hampered in the reestablishment of order in the recon- 
quered Southern States by the rights which the Federal Con- 
stitution secured to those States. The only general conclu- 
sion on this point which can be drawn from history is that 
while the Central Government is likely to find less and less 
difficulty in enforcing its will against a State or disobedient 
subjects, because the prestige of its success in the Civil War 
has strengthened it and the facilities of communication 
make the raising and moving of troops more easy, neverthe- 



304 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

less recalcitrant States, or groups of States, still enjoy cer- 
tain advantages for resistance, advantages due partly to the 
legal position, partly to their local sentiment, which rebels 
might not have in unified countries like England, France, 
or Italy. 

III. Everybody knows that it was the Federal system, 
and the doctrine of State sovereignty grounded thereon, 
and not expressly excluded, though certainly not recognized, 
by the Constitution, which led to the secession of 1861, and 
gave European powers a plausible ground for recognizing 
the insurgent minority as belligerents. Nothing seems now 
less probable than another secession, not merely because the 
supposed legal basis for it has been abandoned, and because 
the advantages of continued union are more obvious than 
ever before, but because the precedent of the victory won by 
the North will discourage like attempts in the future. This 
is so strongly felt that it has not even been thought worth 
while to add to the Constitution an amendment negativing 
the right to secede. The doctrine of the legal indestructi- 
bility of the Union is now well established. To establish it, 
however, cost thousands of milUons of dollars and the lives 
of a million of men. 

IV. The combination of States into groups was a famil- 
iar feature of politics before the war. South Carolina and 
the Gulf States constituted one such, and the most energetic, 
group; the New England States frequently acted as another, 
especially during the War of 1812. At present, though, there 
are several sets of States whose common interests lead their 
representatives in Congress to act together, it is no longer 
the fashion for States to combine in an official way through 
their State organizations, and their doing so would excite 
reprehension. It is easier, safer, and more effective to act 
through the great National parties. Any considerable State 
interest (such as that of the silver-miners or cattle-men, or 



CRITICISM OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 305 

Protectionist manufacturers) can generally compel a party 
to conciliate it by threatening to forsake the party if neg- 
lected. Political action runs less in State channels than it 
did formerly, and the only really threatening form which 
the combined action of States could take, that of using 
for a common disloyal purpose State revenues and the ma- 
chinery of State Governments, has become, since the failure 
of secession, most improbable. 

It has been a singular piece of good fortune that lines of 
religious difference have never happened to coincide with 
State lines; nor has any particular creed ever dominated any 
group of States. The religious forces which in some coun- 
tries and times have given rise to grave civil discord, have in 
America never weakened the Federal fabric. 

V. Towards the close of the nineteenth century two signifi- 
cant phenomena began to be seen. One was the increasing 
power of incorporated companies and combinations of capi- 
talists. It began to be felt that there ought to be a power of 
regulating corporations, and that such regulation cannot be 
effective unless it proceeds from Federal authority and ap- 
plies all over the Union. At present the power of Congress 
is deemed to be limited to the operations of inter-State com- 
merce, so that the rest of the work done by corporations, 
with the law governing their creation and management, 
belongs to the several States. The other phenomenon was 
the growing demand for various social reforms, some of 
which (such as the regulation of child labor) are deemed to 
be neglected by the more backward States, while others can- 
not be fully carried out except by laws of general applica- 
tion. The diflBculty of meeting this demand under existing 
conditions has led to many complaints, and while some call 
for the amendment of the Constitution, others have gone so 
far as to suggest that the courts ought now to construe the 
Constitution as conferring powers it has not hitherto been 
deemed to include. 



306 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

VI. The want of uniformity in private law and methods of 
administration is an evil which different minds will judge by 
different standards. Some may think it a positive benefit to 
secure a variety which is interesting in itself and makes pos- 
sible the trying of experiments from which the whole coun- 
try may profit. Is variety within a country more a gain or a 
loss? Diversity in coinage, in weights and measures, in the 
rules regarding bills and checques and banking and com- 
merce generally is obviously inconvenient. Diversity in 
dress, in food, in the habits and usages of society, is almost 
as obviously a thing to rejoice over, because it diminishes 
the terrible monotony of life. Diversity in religious opinion 
and worship excited horror in the Middle Ages, but now 
passes unnoticed, except where Governments are intolerant. 
In the United States the possible diversity of laws is im- 
mense. Subject to a few prohibitions contained in the Con- 
stitution, each State can play whatever tricks it pleases with 
the law of family relations, of inheritance, of contracts, of 
torts, of crimes. But the actual diversity is not great, for all 
the States, save Louisiana, have taken the English common 
and statute law of 1776 as their point of departure, and have 
adhered to its main principles. A more complete uniformity 
as regards marriage and divorce is desirable, for it is partic- 
ularly awkward not to know whether you are married or 
not, nor whether you have been or can be divorced or not; 
and several States have tried bold experiments on divorce 
laws. But, on the whole, far less inconvenience than could 
have been expected seems to be caused by the varying laws 
of different States, partly because commercial law is the de- 
partment in which the diversity is smallest, partly because 
American practitioners and judges have become expert in 
applying the rules for determining which law, where those 
of different States are in question, ought to be deemed to 
govern a given case. However, some States have taken steps 



CRITICISM OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 307 

to reduce this diversity by appointing Commissions, in- 
structed to meet and confer as to the best means of securing 
uniform State legislation on some important subjects, and 
progress in this direction has been made. 

He who is conducted over an iron-clad warship, and sees 
the infinite intricacy of the machinery and mechanical ap- 
pliances which it contains and by which its engines, its guns, 
its turrets, its torpedoes, its apparatus for anchoring and 
making sail, are worked, is apt to think that it must break 
down in the rough practice of war. He is told, however, that 
the more is done by machinery, the more safely and easily 
does everything go on, because the machinery can be relied 
on to work accurately, and the performance by it of the 
heavier work leaves the crew free to attend to the general 
management of the vessel and her armament. So in study- 
ing the elaborate devices with which the Federal system of 
the United States has been equipped, one fancies that with 
so many authorities and bodies whose functions are intri- 
cately interlaced, and some of which may collide with others, 
there must be a great risk of break-downs and deadlocks, 
not to speak of an expense much exceeding that which is 
incident to a simple centralized government. In America, 
however, smoothness of working is secured by elaboration 
of device; and complex as the mechanism of the government 
may appear, the citizens have grown so familiar with it that 
its play is smooth and easy, attended with less trouble, and 
certainly with less suspicion on the part of the people, than 
would belong to a scheme which vested all powers in one 
administration and one legislature. The expense is admitted, 
but is considered no grave defect when compared with the 
waste which arises from untrustworthy officials and legisla- 
tors whose depredations would, it is thought, be greater were 
their sphere of action wider, and the checks upon them 
fewer. He who examines a system of government from with- 



308 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

out is generally disposed to overrate the difficulties in work- 
ing which its complexity causes. Few things, for instance, 
are harder than to explain to a person who has not been a 
student in one of the two ancient English universities the 
nature of their highly complex constitution and the relation 
of the college to the university. If he does apprehend it he 
pronounces it too intricate for the purposes it has to serve. 
To those who have grown up under it, nothing is simpler 
and more obvious. 

There is a blemish characteristic of the American federa- 
tion which Americans seldom notice because it seems to 
them unavoidable. This is the practice, in selecting candi- 
dates for Federal office, of regarding not so much the merits 
of the candidate as the effect which his nomination will have 
upon the vote of the State to which he belongs. Second-rate 
men are run for first-rate posts, not because the party which 
runs them overrates their capacity, but because it expects 
to carry their State either by their local influence or through 
the pleasure which the State feels in the prospect of seeing 
one of its own citizens in high office. This of course works in 
favor of the politicians who come from a large State. No 
doubt the leading men of a large State are prima facie more 
likely to be men of high ability than those of a small State, 
because the field of choice is wider and the competition 
keener. One is reminded of the story of the leading citizen 
in the isle of Seriphus who observed to Themistocles, "You 
would not have been famous had you been born in Seriphus," 
to which Themistocles replied, "Neither would you had you 
been born in Athens." The two great States of Virginia and 
Massachusetts reared one-half of the men who won distinc- 
tion in the first fifty years of the history of the Republic. 
Nevertheless it often happens that a small State produces a 
first-rate man, whom the country ought to have in one of its 
highest places, but who is passed over because the Federal 



CRITICISM OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 309 

system gives great weight to the voice of a State, and be- 
cause State sentiment is so strong that the voters of a State 
which has a large and perhaps a doubtful vote to cast in na- 
tional elections, prefer an inferior man in whom they are 
directly interested to a superior one who is a stranger. It is 
also unfortunate that the President's liberty of choice in 
forming his Cabinet should be restricted by the doctrine 
that he must not have in it, if possible, two persons from the 
same State. 

I have left to the last the gravest reproach which Euro- 
peans have been wont to bring against Federalism in Amer- 
ica. They attributed to it the origin, or at least the virulence, 
of the great struggle over slavery which tried the Constitu- 
tion so severely. That struggle created parties which, though 
they had adherents everywhere, no doubt tended more and 
more to become identified with States, controlling the State 
organizations and bending the State Governments to their 
service. It gave tremendous importance to legal questions 
arising out of the differences between the law of the Slave 
States and the Free States, questions which the Constitu- 
tion had either evaded or not foreseen. It shook the credit of 
the Supreme Court by making the judicial decision of those 
questions appear due to partiality to the Slave States. It 
disposed the extreme men on both sides to hate the Federal 
Union which bound them in the same body with their an- 
tagonists. It laid hold of the doctrine of State rights and 
State sovereignty as entitling a Commonwealth which 
deemed itself aggrieved to shake off allegiance to the Na- 
tional Government. Thus at last it brought about secession 
and the great Civil War. Even when the war was over, the 
dregs of the poison continued to haunt and vex the system 
and bred fresh disorders in it. The constitutional duty of 
reestablishing the State Governments of the conquered 
States on the one hand, and on the other hand the practical 



310 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

danger of doing so while their people remained disaffected, 
produced the Military Governments, the *' Carpet-bag'* 
Governments, the Ku Klux Klan outrages, the gift of suf- 
frage to a negro population unfit for such a privilege, yet ap- 
parently capable of being protected in no other way. AH 
these mischiefs, it has often been argued, are the results of 
the Federal structure of the Government, which carried in 
its bosom the seeds of its own destruction, seeds sure to 
ripen so soon as there arose a question that stirred men 
deeply. 

It may be answered not merely that the National Govern- 
ment has survived this struggle and emerged from it 
stronger than before, but also that Federalism did not pro- 
duce the struggle, but only gave to it the particular form of a 
series of legal controversies over the Federal pact followed 
by a war of States against the Union. Where such vast eco- 
nomic interests were involved, and such hot passions roused, 
there must anyhow have been a conflict, and it may well be 
that a conflict raging within the vitals of a centralized gov- 
ernment would have proved no less terrible and would have 
left as many noxious sequelae behind. 

In blaming either the conduct of a person or the plan and 
scheme of a government for evils which have actually fol- 
lowed, men are apt to overlook those other evils, perhaps as 
great, which might have flowed from different conduct or 
some other plan. All that can fairly be concluded from the 
history of the American Union is that Federalism is obliged 
by the law of its nature to leave in the hands of States 
powers whose exercise may give to political controversy a 
peculiarly dangerous form, may impede the assertion of 
National authority, may even, when long-continued exas- 
peration has suspended or destroyed the feeling of a common 
patriotism, threaten National unity itself. Against this 
danger is to be set the fact that the looser structure of a 



CRITICISM OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 311 

Federal Government and the scope it gives for diversities of 
legislation in different parts of a country may avert sources 
of discord, or prevent local discord from growing into a con- 
test of national magnitude. 



MERITS OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM ^ 
JAMES BRYCE 

I DO not propose to discuss in this chapter the advantages 
of FederaHsm in general, for to do this we should have to 
wander off to other times and countries, to talk of Achaia 
and the Hanseatic League and the Swiss Confederation. I 
shall comment on those merits only which experience of the 
American Union illustrates. 

There are two distinct lines of argument by which their 
Federal system was recommended to the f ramers of the Con- 
stitution, and upon which it is still held forth for imitation 
to other countries. These lines have been so generally con- 
founded that it is well to present them in a precise form. 

The first set of arguments point to Federalism proper, and 
are the following: — 

1. That Federalism furnishes the means of uniting com- 
monwealths into one nation under one National 
Government without extinguishing their separate 
administrations, legislatures, and local patriotisms. 
As the Americans of 1787 would probably have pre- 
ferred complete State independence to the fusion of 
their States into a unified government. Federalism 
was the only resource. So when the new Germanic 
Empire, which is really a Federation, was estab- 
lished in 1871, Bavaria and Wurtemberg could not 
have been brought under a national government 
save by a Federal scheme. Similar suggestions, as 
every one knows, have been made for re-setting the 

* The American Commonwealth (Revised Edition), part i, chapter xxx. 
Reprinted through the generous permission of The Macmillan Company. 



MERITS OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 313 

relations of Ireland to Great Britain, and of the self- 
governing British colonies to the United Kingdom. 
There are causes and conditions which dispose inde- 
pendent or semi-independent communities, or peo- 
ples living under loosely compacted governments, to 
form a closer union in a Federal form. There are 
other causes and conditions which dispose the sub- 
jects of one government, or sections of these sub- 
jects, to desire to make their governmental union 
less close by substituting a Federal for a unitary sys- 
tem. In both sets of cases, the centripetal or cen- 
trifugal forces spring from the local position, the his- 
tory, the sentiments, the economic needs of those 
among whom the problem arises; and that which is 
good for one people or political body is not neces- 
sarily good for another. Federalism is an equally 
legitimate resource whether it is adopted for the 
sake of tightening or for the sake of loosening a pre- 
existing bond. 
2. That Federalism supplies the best means of developing 
a new and vast country. It permits an expansion 
whose extent, and whose rate and manner of prog- 
ress, cannot be foreseen to proceed with more vari- 
ety of methods, more adaptation of laws and admin- 
istration to the circumstances of each part of the 
territory, and altogether in a more truly natural and 
spontaneous way, than can be expected under a cen- 
tralized government, which is disposed to apply its 
settled system through all its dominions. Thus the 
special needs of a new region are met by the inhab- 
itants in the way they find best: its laws can be 
adapted to the economic conditions which from time 
to time present themselves: its special evils can be 
cured by special remedies, perhaps more drastic than 



314 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

an old country demands, perhaps more lax than an 
old country would tolerate; while at the same time 
the spirit of self-reliance among those who build up 
these new communities is stimulated and respected. 

3. That Federalism prevents the rise of a despotic cen- 

tral government, absorbing other powers, and men- 
acing the private liberties of the citizen. This may 
now seem to have been an idle fear, so far as Amer- 
ica was concerned. It was, however, a very real 
fear among the ancestors of the present Ameri- 
cans, and nearly led to the rejection even of so 
undespotic an instrument as the Federal Consti- 
tution of 1789. Congress (or the President, as the 
case may be) is still sometimes described as a ty- 
rant by the party which does not control it, simply 
because it is a central government: and the States 
are represented as bulwarks against its encroach- 
ments. 
The second set of arguments relate to and recommend not 

so much Federalism as local self-government. I state them 

briefly because they are familiar: — 

4. Self-government stimulates the interest of people in 

the affairs of their neighborhood, sustains local po- 
litical life, educates the citizen in his daily round of 
civic duty, teaches him that perpetual vigilance and 
the sacrifice of his own time and labor are the price 
that must be paid for individual liberty and collec- 
tive prosperity. 

5. Self-government secures the good administration of 

local affairs by giving the inhabitants of each locality 
due means of overseeing the conduct of their busi- 
ness. 
That these two sets of grounds are distinct appears from 
the fact that the sort of local interest which local self -gov- 



MERITS OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 315 

eminent evokes is quite a different thing from the interest 
men feel in the affairs of a large body like an American 
State. So, too, the control over its own affairs of a township, 
or even a small county, where everybody can know what is 
going on, is quite different from the control exercisable over 
the affairs of a commonwealth with a million of people. 
Local self-government may exist in a unified country like 
England, and may be wanting in a Federal country like 
Germany. And even in the United States, while some 
States, as in New England, possessed an admirably complete 
system of local government, others, such as Virginia, the 
old champion of State sovereignty, were imperfectly pro- 
vided with it. Nevertheless, through both sets of argu- 
ments there runs the general principle, applicable in every 
part and branch of government, that, where other things 
are equal, the more power is given to the units which com- 
pose the Nation, be they large or small, and the less to the 
Nation as a whole and to its central authority, so much the 
fuller will be the liberties and so much greater the energy of 
the individuals who compose the people. This principle, 
though it had not been then formulated in the way men 
formulate it now, was heartily embraced by the Americans. 
Perhaps it was because they agreed in taking it as an axiom 
that they seldom referred to it in the subsequent contro- 
versies proceeded on the basis of the Constitution as a law 
rather than on considerations of general political theory. 
A European reader of the history of the first seventy years 
of the United States is surprised how little is said, through 
the interminable discussions regarding the relation of the 
Federal government to the States, on the respective ad- 
vantages of centralization or localization of powers as a 
matter of historical experience and general expediency. 

Three further benefits to be expected from a Federal sys- 
tem may be mentioned, benefits which seem to have been 



316 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

unnoticed or little regarded by those who established it in 
America: — 

6. Federalism enables a people to try experiments in legis- 

lation and administration which could not be safely 
tried in a large centralized country. A comparatively 
small commonwealth like an American State easily 
makes and unmakes its laws; mistakes are not se- 
rious, for they are soon corrected; other States profit 
by the experience of a law or a method which has 
worked well or ill in the State that has tried it. 

7. Federalism, if it diminishes the collective force of a 

nation, diminishes also the risks to which its size and 
the diversities of its parts expose it. A nation so di- 
vided is like a ship built with water-tight compart- 
ments. When a leak is sprung in one compartment, 
the cargo stowed there may be damaged, but the 
other compartments remain dry and keep the ship 
afloat. So, if social discord or an economic crisis has 
produced disorders or foolish legislation in one mem- 
ber of the Federal body, the mischief may stop at 
the State frontier instead of spreading through and 
tainting the Nation at large. 

8. Federalism, by creating many local legislatures with 

wide powers, relieves the National Legislature of a 
part of that large mass of functions which might 
otherwise prove too heavy for it. Thus business is 
more promptly despatched, and the great central 
council of the Nation has time to deliberate on those 
questions which most nearly touch the whole coun- 
try. 
All of these arguments recommending Federalism have 

proved valid in American experience. 

To create a Nation while preserving the States was the 

main reason for the grant of powers which the National 



MERITS OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 317 

Government received; an all-sufficient reason, and one which 
holds good to-day. The several States have changed greatly 
since 1789, but they are still commonwealths whose wide au- 
thority and jurisdiction practical men are agreed in desiring 
to maintain. 

Not much was said in the Convention of 1787 regarding 
the best methods of extending government over the un- 
settled territories lying beyond the Alleghany Mountains. 
It was, however, assumed that they would develop as the 
older colonies had developed, and in point of fact each dis- 
trict, when it became sufficiently populous, was formed 
into a self-governing State, the less populous divisions still 
remaining in the status of semi-self-governing Territories. 
Although many blunders have been committed in the pro- 
cess of development, especially in the reckless contraction 
of debt and the wasteful disposal of the public lands, greater 
evils might have resulted had the creation of local institu- 
tions and the control of new communities been left to the 
Central Government. Congress would have been not less im- 
provident than the State Governments, for it would have 
been even less irresistible, the growth of order and civiliza- 
tion probably slower. It deserves to be noticed that, in 
granting self-government to all those of her colonies whose 
population is of English race, England has practically 
adopted the same plan as the United States have done with 
their western territory. The results have been generally 
satisfactory, although England, like America, has found that 
her colonists have in some regions been disposed to treat the 
aboriginal inhabitants, whose lands they covet and whose 
persons they hate, with a harshness and injustice which the 
mother country would gladly check. 

The argument which set forth the advantages of local 
self-government were far more applicable to the States of 
1787 than to those of 1907. Virginia, then the largest State, 



318^ FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

had only half a million free inhabitants, less than the pres- 
ent population of Baltimore. Massachusetts had 450,000, 
Pennsylvania 400,000, New York 300,000; while Georgia, 
Rhode Island, and Delaware had (even counting slaves) 
less than 200,000 between them. These were communities 
to which the expression "local seK-government " might be 
applied, for, although the population was scattered, the 
numbers were small enough for the citizens to have a per- 
sonal knowledge of their leading men, and a personal inter- 
est (especially as a large proportion were land-owners) in the 
economy and prudence with which common affairs were 
managed. Now, however, when of the nearly fifty States 
twenty-nine have more than a million inhabitants, and six 
have more than three millions, the newer States, being, 
moreover, larger in area than most of the older ones, the 
stake of each citizen is relatively smaller, and generally too 
small to sustain his activity in politics, and the party chiefs 
of the State are known to him only by the newspapers or by 
their occasional visits on a stumping tour. 

All that can be claimed for the Federal system under this 
head of the argument is that it provides the machinery for a 
better control of the taxes raised and expended in a given 
region of the country, and a better oversight of the public 
works undertaken there than would be possible were every- 
thing left to the Central Government. As regards the educa- 
tive effect of numerous and frequent elections, it will be 
shown in a later chapter that elections in America are too 
many and come too frequently. Overtaxing the attention of 
the citizen and frittering away his interest, they leave him 
at the mercy of knots of selfish adventurers. 

The utility of the State system in localizing disorders or 
discontents, and the opportunities it affords for trying easily 
and safely experiments which ought to be tried in legislation 
and administration, constitute benefits to be set off against 



MERITS OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 319 

the risk, referred to in the last preceding chapters, that evils 
may continue in a district, may work injustice to a minority 
and invite imitation by other States, which the wholesome 
stringency of the Central Government might have sup- 
pressed. 

A more unqualified approval may be given to the division 
of legislative powers. The existence of the State Legisla- 
tures relieves Congress of a burden too heavy for its shoul- 
ders ; for although it has far less foreign policy to discuss than 
the Parliaments of England, France, or Italy, and although 
the separation of the executive from the legislative depart- 
ment gives it less responsibility for the ordinary conduct of 
the Administration than devolves on those chambers, it 
could not possibly, were its competence as large as theirs, 
deal with the multiform and increasing demands of the dif- 
ferent parts of the Union. There is great diversity in the 
material conditions of different parts of the country, and at 
present the people, particularly in the West, are eager to 
have their difficulties handled, their economic and social 
needs satisfied, by the State and the law. It would be ex- 
tremely difficult for any central legislature to pass measures 
suited to these dissimilar and varying conditions. How little 
Congress could satisfy them appears by the very imperfect 
success with which it cultivates the field of legislation to 
which it is now limited. 

These merits of Federal system of government which I 
have enumerated are the counterpart and consequences of 
that limitation of the central authority whose dangers were 
indicated in the last chapter. They are, if one may reverse 
the French phrase, the qualities of Federalism's defects. 
The problem which all federalized nations have to solve is 
how to secure an efficient central government and preserve 
National unity, while allowing free scope for the diversities, 
and free play to the authorities, of the members of the feder- 



320 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

ation. It is, to adopt that favorite astronomical metaphor 
which no American panegyrist of the Constitution omits, to 
keep the centrifugal and centripetal forces in equilibrium, 
so that neither the planet States shall fly off into space, 
nor the sun of the Central Government draw them into its 
consuming fires. The characteristic merit of the American 
Constitution lies in the method by which it has solved this 
problem. It has given the National Government a direct 
authority over all citizens, irrespective of the State Gov- 
ernments, and has therefore been able safely to leave wide 
powers in the hands of those Governments. And by placing 
the Constitution above both the National and the State 
Governments, it has referred the arbitrament of disputes 
between them to an independent body, charged with the 
interpretation of the Constitution, a body which is to be 
deemed not so much a third authority in the Government as 
the living voice of the Constitution, the unfolder of the mind 
of the people whose will stands expressed in that supreme in- 
strument. 

The application of these two principles, unknown to, or at 
any rate little used by, any previous federation, has contrib- 
uted more than any thing else to the stability of the Amer- 
ican system, and to the reverence which its citizens feel for 
it, a reverence which is the best security for its permanence. 
Yet even these devices would not have succeeded but for the 
presence of a mass of moral and material influences, stronger 
than any political devices, which have maintained the equi- 
librium of centrifugal and centripetal forces. On the one 
hand, there has been the love of local independence and self- 
government; on the other, the sense of community in blood, 
in language, in habits and ideas, a common pride in the 
National history and the National flag. 

Quid leges sine morihus ? The student of institutions, as 
well as the lawyer, is apt to overrate the effect of mechanical 



MERITS OF THE FEDERAL SYSTEM 321 

contrivances in politics. I admit that in America they have 
had one excellent result; they have formed a legal habit in 
the mind of the Nation. But the true value of a political 
contrivance resides not in its ingenuity, but in its adaptation 
to the temper and circumstances of the people for whom it is 
designed, in its power of using, fostering and giving a legal 
form to those forces of sentiment and interest which it finds 
in being. So it has been with the American system. Just 
as the passions which the question of slavery evoked strained 
the Federal fabric, disclosing unforeseen weaknesses, so the 
love of the Union, the sense of the material and social bene- 
fits involved •» in its preservation, appeared in unexpected 
strength, and manned with zealous defenders the ramparts 
of the sovereign Constitution. It is this need of determin- 
ing the suitability of the machinery for the workmen and its 
probable influence upon them, as well as the capacity of the 
workmen for using and their willingness to use the machinery, 
which makes it so difficult to predict the operation of a po- 
litical contrivance, or, when it has succeeded in one country, 
to advise its imitation in another. The growing strength of 
the National Government in the United States is largely due 
to sentimental forces that were weak a century ago, and to 
a development of internal communications which was then 
undreamt of. And the devices which we admire in the Con- 
stitution might prove unworkable among a people less pa- 
triotic and self-reliant, less law-loving and law-abiding, than 
are the English of America. 



THE COOPERATION OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING 
PEOPLES 1 

ARTHUR JAMES BALFOUR 

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Chamber: The 
noble words to which we have just listened struck, I am well 
convinced, a sympathetic chord in the heart of every one 
in your audience, but I don't think that in all the multitude 
gathered here to-day there was one to whom they went more 
home than to myself. Mr. President, I have had as the 
dream of my life a hope that before I died the union between 
the English-speaking, freedom-loving branches of the hu- 
man race should be drawn far closer than in the past, and 
that all temporary causes of difference which may ever have 
separated two great peoples would be seen in its true and 
just proportion, and that we should all realize, on whatever 
side of the Atlantic fortune had place us, that the things 
wherein we have differed in the past sink into absolute in- 
significance compared with those vital agreements which at 
all times, but never at such a time as the present, unite us in 
one great spiritual whole. 

f My friend Mr. Choate, in a speech that he delivered 
yesterday at the City Hall, told his audience that as Am- 
bassador to Great Britain he had been in close official rela- 
tions with me through many years, and that during all of 
these years I had stood solid — I think that was his phrase 
— for American friendship. That is strictly and absolutely 
true, and the feelings that I have this great opportunity of 

^ Speech made before the New York Chamber of Commerce, May 12, 
1917, by the head of the British Mission to the United States. 



COOPERATION OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 323 

expressing are not born, believe me, of the necessities of the 
Great War; they are not the offspring of recent events; 
they are based upon my most enduring convictions, con- 
victions of which I cannot remember the beginning, which 
I have held with unalterable fidelity through the political 
life which is now a long life, and which, I am quite sure, I 
shall cherish to the end. 

You, Mr. President, have referred to the preparations 
that were made only, I suppose, a little more than two years 
and a half ago — though how long those two and a half years 
seem to all of us ! — preparations that were made two and a 
half years ago to celebrate the one hundred years of peace 
between our two countries. I ardently supported that move- 
ment, and yet the very phrases in which its objects were ex- 
pressed show how inadequate it was to reach the real truth 
and heart of the matter. It is true that one hundred years 
have passed, and many hundreds of years, I hope, were to 
pass, before any overt act of war should divide those whom, 
as you said in your final words, should never be asunder. 
But, after all, normal and official peace is but a small thing 
compared with that intimate mutual comprehension which 
ought always to bind the branches of the English-speaking 
peoples together. You have absorbed in your midst many 
admirable citizens drawn from all parts of Europe, whom 
American institutions and American ways of thought have 
moulded and are moulding into one great people. I rejoice 
to think it should be so. A similar process on a smaller scale 
is going on in the self-governing dominions of the British 
Empire. It is a good process; it is a noble process. Let us 
never forget that wherever be the place in which that great 
and beneficent process is going on, whether it be in Canada, 
whether it be in Australia, or whether on the largest scale of 
all it be in the United States of America, the spirit which the 
immigrant absorbs is a spirit in all these places largely due to 



324 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

a historic past in which your forefathers and my forefathers, 
gentlemen, all had their share. 

You incidentally mentioned, Mr. President, that this very 
body I am addressing dates the origin of its society to a 
charter, I think you said of 1758. Is not that characteristic 
and symbolic of what happens on both sides of the Atlantic? 
We strike our roots into a distant past. We have known how 
through revolutions, in spite of revolutions, sometimes be- 
cause of revolutions, and through revolutions, we have known 
how to weld the past and the present into one organic whole, 
and I see around me in a country which calls itself and is, in 
one sense, a new country — I everywhere see signs of these 
roots which draw their nourishment and their strength from 
epochs far removed from us, and I feel when I talk to those 
who are born and bred under the American flag, who have 
absorbed all their political ideas from American institutions 
— I feel, and I think I speak for my friends here that they 
also feel — I feel that I am speaking to those brought up, as 
it were, under one influence, in one house, under one set of 
educational conditions. I require no explanations of what 
they think, and I am required to give no explanations of 
what I think, because our views of great questions seem to 
be shared; born, as it were, of common knowledge which we 
know instinctively, and which we do not require explicitly 
to expound or to define. 

This is a great heritage to have in common, and I think, 
nay, I am sure, that you, Mr. President, struck a true note 
when you told us that all the sentiments which I have im- 
perfectly tried to express this afternoon will receive a double 
significance, and infinitely increased significance from the 
fact that we are now not merely sharing a common political 
ideal in some speculative fashion, but that all of us are com- 
mitted to sacrificing everything that we hold most dear to 
carry these ideals into practical execution. 



COOPERATION OF ENGLISH-SPEAKING PEOPLES 325 

There will be a bond of union between our peoples which 
nothing will ever be able to shake, and which I believe to be 
the securest guarantee for the futiu-e of the world, for the 
future peace and freedom of the world. 

Mr. President, I have already detained you too long, but 
there was one word which fell from you toward the end of 
your speech upon post-war problems and you indicated 
your view — a view which I personally entirely share — that 
when this tremendous conflict has drawn to its appointed 
close, and when, as I believe, victory shall have crowned our 
joint efforts, there will arise not merely between nations, but 
within nations, a series of problems which w^ill tax all our 
statesmanship to deal with. I look forward to that time, 
not, indeed, wholly without anxiety, but in the main with 
hope and with confidence; and one of the reasons for that 
hope and one of the foundations of that confidence is to be 
found in the fact that your nation and my nation will have 
so much to do with the settlement of the questions. I do not 
think anybody will accuse me of being insensible to the gen- 
ius and to the accomplishments of other nations. I am one 
of those who believe that only in the multitude of different 
forms of culture can the completed movement of progress 
have all the variety in unity of which it is capable; and, 
while I admire other cultures, and while I recognize how 
absolutely all-important they are to the future of mankind, 
I do think that among the English-speaking peoples is es- 
pecially and peculiarly to be found a certain political mod- 
eration in all classes, which gives one the surest hope of 
dealing in a reasonable progressive spirit with social and 
political difficulties. And without that reasonable modera- 
tion interchanges are violent also, and the smooth advance of 
humanity is seriously interfered with. I believe that on this 
side of the Atlantic, and I hope on the other side of the At- 
lantic, if and when these great problems have actively to be 



326 FOREIGN OPINION OF THE UNITED STATES 

dealt with, it will not be beyond the reach of your states- 
manship or of our own, to deal with them in such a manner 
that we cannot merely look back upon this great war as the 
beginning of a time of improved international relations, of 
settled peace, of deliberate refusal to pour out oceans of 
blood to satisfy some notion of domination; but that in ad- 
dition to those blessings the war may prove to be the begin- 
ning of a revivified civilization, which will be felt in all de- 
partments of human activity, which will not merely touch 
the material but also the spiritual side of mankind, and 
which will make the second decade of the twentieth century 
memorable in the history of mankind. 



H 32 88 '^ 



